Elaine Vassie relishes a man-size job at National League One strugglers Manchester Rugby Club

from MailOnline:

To say that Elaine Vassie has been thrown in at the deep end wouldn’t properly explain the towering, daunting scale of the coaching challenge she has signed up for, a challenge she is relishing. Manchester Rugby Club are adrift at the foot of National League One having lost all 15 their matches this season, with scorelines against them so brutal that relegation is ce rtain. Vassie arrived at the club in the summer to provide conditioning and management assistance to Paul Reid, whom she had worked with for a year in the RFU’s community rugby and coach development system.

They encountered utter disarray, as uncertainty over revised funding levels had seen the previous first-team squad stripped bare. ‘For the first training session when we came down here, there were four senior players and the rest were Colts — guys aged 17 or 18,’ said Vassie.

A belated recruitment drive did little to prevent the club entering the new league campaign with a group of willing but inexperienced players and the losses began to stack up.  They were even deducted two points for breaching uncontested scrum regulations.  Then Reid’s young son became ill with epilepsy and after weeks of toing and froing between hospital, the day job and training, he was forced to resign. Vassie took charge for the trip to Redruth and was promptly offered the head coach position.
‘They handed over the reins to me, for want of a better phrase, at the end of October,’ she said.  ‘When I was asked to take over I didn’t even really think about it. I just thought, “I’ll keep doing what I’m doing”. I am loving it. ‘The plan was for me to gradually do more coaching here anyway, because Paul didn’t have any assistants as such. That was always on the agenda, but not quite so soon. I still work for the RFU as a community rugby coach in the Burnley area. This job is only part-time because of the funding issue.’

Despite the steady growth of women’s rugby in England, a female coach in charge of a senior men’s team is highly unusual, especially at National League level. Yet, Vassie is genuinely bemused by any suggestion that gender might be a factor in a notoriously macho environment.
The 28-year-old has played rugby for six or seven years (although she is currently awaiting knee surgery) and has been coaching for four or five. All her working life has been in fitness and sport and, crucially, her appointment has been embraced by everyone at Manchester RFC.

‘There hasn’t been any problem at all,’ she said. ‘I have always worked with guys since I left school so I am used to the environment. A lot of women might be quite apprehensive but I’m not, and because I’m not apprehensive I don’t encounter a problem. They take me as a coach or conditioner and just get on with it. ‘I don’t look at them and say, “Oh God, they’re boys!”. The lads here have been incredibly supportive, perhaps even more so than I anticipated. The committee men and all the old boys at the club have all been great, too. I don’t think anyone at Manchester would have any time for it (sexism) anyway, given the situation we are in.’ Long term, Vassie does not harbour any desire to coach in the Premiership. Instead, her ambitions lie in coach development with the RFU. But for the next few years, Manchester are her priority.

She is infused with optimism despite the club’s seemingly bleak predicament. With a home clash against Nuneaton looming tomorrow, she says: ‘If we can keep improving then we will be in a position to challenge for a win this season, let’s say, but that is not the focus. ‘We are looking ahead to next season. We’ve got some great guys here and if they can keep motivating themselves, we give them some time, then we drop down one division, I think we will be in a reasonable position. ‘We should stabilise and there’s no reason why we should drop further. People see the scorelines and think we are obviously going to plummet three, four or five levels, but I don’t think that has to happen.

‘The first time I came down here on a Sunday morning and saw the junior section, I had never seen anything like it. The whole point of having all the history behind the club and having 300 kids playing on a Sunday is to have an outcome at the end of it.  ‘We need to make sure those kids can stay involved in this club. That is a massive driver. It is not an option to let it all slip away.’

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