Connacht have at least been able to move quickly in appointing a successor to Kieran Keane and, aside from his wealth of experience, the attraction in hiring Australian Andy Friend on a three-year deal is that he is available and can therefore join the province at the end of June for pre-season.
The 49-year-old has had a varied career as an assistant coach at Test level and head coach in Super Rugby, the English Premiership and in Japan, as well as Under-20 level and in the sevens game.
He has never been in the same job for more than three years but in citing Friend’s experience, Connacht CEO Willie Ruane said t the Australian “shares our ambition for Connacht Rugby over the coming seasons. He will arrive in the Sportsground at the end of June and will oversee the preseason training plan ahead of the 2018/19 season.”
Just as tellingly, an “honoured” Friend was quoted as saying: “Connacht is a proud province with huge potential to build on the success of recent seasons. I look forward to meeting the players, staff, supporters and wider community when I arrive in the Sportsground ahead of the new season.”
Following on from Pat Lam’s four years at the helm, when he not only brought the Pro12 title in 2016 but happily reached out to the staff, supporters and wider community, it is widely believed Keane struggled to embrace these off-the-pitch aspects of the job.
Born in Canberra, Friend played fullback for the Australian Schools alongside Tim Horan and Jason Little before representing ACT Kookaburras, and was regarded as a huge talent, until a severe knee injury cut short his career in his early twenties.
Friend has been on the coaching circuit for 23 years, dating back to his time with the Australian Institute of Sport’s rugby programme in 1995, before he worked alongside Matt Williams and Alan Gaffney as a skills coach from 1997 to 1999.
He had a similar remit under Eddie Jones with first the Brumbies and then the Wallabies from the 2002 Tri Nations through to the 2003 World Cup, when Australia reached the final on home soil.
Having guided the Australian U-21s to the final of the 2005 World Championships in Argentina, which they lost 24-20 to South Africa, and worked as an assistant coach with the Waratahs again, Friend moved to England and served as head coach at Harlequins under director of rugby Dean Richards for three seasons from 2005 to 2008.
Earning promotion
Harlequins had just been relegated from the Premiership, and in the 2005-06 season they cut a swathe through National Division One when winning 25 of 26 matches and earning promotion with four games to spare.
Friend then helped to establish ’Quins in the Premiership, as they finished seventh and sixth in the next two seasons, with ten and 12 wins out of 22 games. They thus also returned to the Heineken Cup in his third season, 2007-08, although they failed to win a pool match.
Friend then assumed the role of head coach at the Brumbies and, having finished ninth in 2008, he again oversaw an improvement as they finished seventh in the Super Rugby campaigns of 2009 and 2010, just missing out on the play-offs both times.
However, merely two games into the 2011 season, after a 28-20 home win over the Chiefs and a 25-24 loss away to the Rebels, he was dismissed amid reports of player unrest, ironically a fate which also befell IRFU performance director David Nucifora immediately after he guided the Brumbies to the 2004 Super Rugby title.
Friend then spent five years in Japan, two years coaching the Canon Eagles and three coaching the Suntory Sungoliath, before becoming head coach of the Australian Sevens team which reached the quarter-finals of the Rio Olympics before stepping down after the Commonwealth Games last year when informed his contract would not be renewed after this year’s World Cup.
Following this he expressed his disillusionment with Australian rugby.
“We’ve tried to build the pyramid from the top down. It doesn’t work,” he said, and described the sevens game as “the new frontier”.
However, he came onto the IRFU radar when recently shortlisted for the Ulster job and he is clearly well regarded by Nucifora, who gave his imprimatur in yesterday’s statement when stating Friend “has experience in driving and developing organisation structures and has spent time working at the top end of the international game”.
Friend took a year out of the game in 2011 after his wife, Kerri Rawlings, came off her bike and suffered a serious brain injury. He undertook a 5000km journey from Cooktown to Canberra along the Bicentennial National Trail to raise awareness and over Aus$170,000 for Brain Injury Australia and Outward Bound.
