‘I hate Newcastle losing but three rugby clubs went bang
The stories come tumbling from Alex Codling like water over Niagara Falls.
From his first appointment as head coach in an office full of gold Oasis CDs, to belly-flopping into a pool from a 10-metre diving board on a tour of Canada with Waspsâ under-21s, you are liable to pick up a few tales in such a varied playing career.
Codling featured for Richmond, Neath, Harlequins, Saracens, England (capped in 2002), Northampton and Montpellier up to 2005, which was followed by coaching roles with clubs such as Harlequins, Ulster and Oyonnax, and with the England team as an assistant to Eddie Jones in summer 2021.
The 50-year-old former second-row, born in Lewisham in London, is now head coach at Newcastle Falcons, bottom of the Premiership. At 32, Codling had just retired from playing at Montpellier.
âEbbw Vale were near the bottom of the Welsh Premier Division and their co-owner Marcus Russell was also manager of Oasis,â he tells i. âWe met in his office in London on the 23rd of December with gold discs covering the walls.
âI started work on New Yearâs Day, and 10 minutes beforehand all the staff resigned in sympathy with the previous coach [Byron Hayward]. So I stood there in front of 45 players, and just told myself âbelieve what you believe inâ, with a huge amount of passion and energy.
âA few weeks later Iâd made connections for life and we won 12 games straight and missed winning the league the following season by a point. Try to treat people the right way, and invest in them, and the rewards in an emotional sense are incredible.â
This is a snapshot of what Newcastle were getting when Codling came back to England in July â the move suited him and his beloved wife Viv â from Oyonnax in Franceâs second division, where he helped earn promotion to the Top 14 and hence won the divisionâs coaching award he jointly received with his colleagues Joe El-Abd, Vincent Debaty and Fabien Cibray at Mondayâs swanky Parisian ceremony.
âI bumped into Thomas Castaignede [the former France fly-half] who I hadnât seen for 20 years since we were at Saracens. I had a black Labrador puppy at the time and I used to bring him into training and he took a liking to Thomasâs trainers. Apart from nausing about line-outs that was the first thing he remembered about me. Rugby is a small world.â
Newcastleâs world has its particular challenges. With budgets cut, 18 players left in the summer, and 13 joined, they have no wins in six Premiership matches, and the squad has nothing like the profile of the title-winning side of Rob Andrew, Jonny Wilkinson and Inga Tuigamala 25 years ago, or Jamie Noon, Toby Flood, Mathew Tait and so on in the subsequent generation. Dave Walder, the previous head coach, left for Bristol. The best-known boss, Dean Richards, no longer has an involvement.
In theory they face the jeopardy of a relegation play-off at the end of this season, although only if the winner of the second-division Championship meets the Premiershipâs entry criteria.
âI am only thinking week to week,â Codling says with an emphasis that should not be ignored.
âI respect what the club are doing. Three [Premiership] clubs have gone bang and if you overstretch, you put yourself in a really precarious position.
âI hate losing; Iâve never been in this position before in my life. So for me, itâs a challenge, but every day I come in with a positive mindset, to try and energise the building.â
Codling is enthused by developing youngsters like Guy Pepper, Ollie Fletcher, Phil Brantingham and the 18-year-old full-back Ben Redshaw. The wing Adam Radwan played for England and âhas aspirations again,â Codling says.
âMy big thing is evolving how weâre going to play. We have got exciting backs and weâre not going to win by slowing the game down and trying to beat people up â we donât have the profile, size-wise.
âWeâve been close in four of the six games, and away at Sale last Friday we had 13 changes, and four players making their Premiership debut, yet we pushed a very strong side that finished second last year down to the last few minutes, and scored four tries. I was massively proud of the group.â
When challenging his team in training, Codling reaches for a figurative aeroplane âblack boxâ, an analogy picked up from Jones, with the twist being it is a repository of information to be used ahead of time instead of waiting to discover what went wrong.
âFor a man of 63 years of age, his appetite to get better is insatiable, and his ability to stimulate and get messages across to players is phenomenal,â says Codling, who also cites Stuart Lancaster, John Kingston and Simon Hardy as influential mentors.
And then we are into more reminiscences, including a âkick up the backsideâ from then Harlequins teammate Keith Wood that changed his career and led to Codling, six months later, playing for Clive Woodwardâs England alongside Ben Kay and Steve Thompson in a famous win in Argentina.
Codling is trying to get an England hero from another sport, Alan Shearer, to speak to Falconsâ players, and he is hoping to meet Newcastle Unitedâs impressive manager Eddie Howe.
For the home match with Exeter Chiefs on Sunday, Wor Flags, whose huge banners are seen at St Jamesâs Park, are supplying a black-and-white âWelcome to the True Northâ one, the size of a whole stand.
âThese types of experiences are invaluable and Iâll push as hard as I can to help get them,â says Codling.