Coach’s word – Patrice Collazo (1/2): “A player can ask me anything”

Born in the Var, Patrice Collazo made the slogan “Here, everything is different” his own long before RCT. From his atypical playing career, in which he had seven transfers and six clubs including one in England, to his coaching career, where he stands out in a world in which former props are a rarity, by way of a character that is again out of the ordinary, Racing 92’s current manager has always followed a path very much his own. In a long interview granted to Ruck Zone, of which this is the first part, he looked at the “Collazo touch” that sets him apart as a coach.

At what point did you think about becoming a coach?

It was when I was in England during my years at Gloucester (2005 to 2008, ed.) before finishing my career at Racing. With Olivier Azam, because we were abroad, we thought about it differently as we were in a culture and a context different from France. So the two of us took our first qualification over there. It is something that appealed to me straight away. Then I came back to France and took my DES so I could be a rugby coach here.

Why are there so many former hookers and so few former props among professional rugby coaches?

A lot of hookers have monopolised the job, but they have forgotten that, in their careers, without the props alongside them they could not have existed, so they have short memories! More seriously, I think it depends on how you experience rugby as a player in the first place. It also depends on whether you project yourself into the future. I believe that today you have to think while you play, and that goes for every position. When you play prop as well, starting with the scrum. For my part, I was also drawn to the game, so I immediately took an interest in a lot of things: the physical, technical and strategic side… But then again, yes, you can say the hookers have monopolised the thing!

“I was not easy to coach”

Were you more of an old-school prop or a modern prop?

The ball was not a booby trap for me! I also loved the scrum, which was different back then. I was lucky to start very young and to play with players from different generations, a bit more “old-school” and focused on the scrum. It was a fine education. It is a position that is hard but that also demands a fair bit of thinking, and you learn a lot about yourself.

As a coach, how would you have “handled” Patrice Collazo the player?

For a start, I do not think I was easy to coach. In rugby terms, I always had a great time everywhere I went with the coaches I had, but in terms of character it could be complicated. When I was not playing, I experienced it as a form of injustice and it took me time to understand that the coach was in fact simply picking the best players.

Has rugby become a different sport with the arrival of cameras and video?

Whether it is rucks, tackles, scrums, mauls… the refereeing was indeed not the same. There were fewer cameras and the touch judges were not a priority for flagging offences either. The referee had to manage everything. And when you have to manage 30 people on your own, there are a load of things you do not see.

Can a coach immediately impose his style when he arrives at a club?

You have to adapt, but I learned that later. What works in one place does not necessarily work in another and what worked for me at La Rochelle did not necessarily work at Toulon. You also have to know how to reinvent yourself, adapt and take account of the players you have available. When you are on a very long-term project, you manage to shape the squad, as at La Rochelle where I did seven years, and you arrive at something that seems to you the best compromise with your ideas and your convictions. But today there is a time-results window that is also crucial. So you have to win matches and adapt very quickly to the context with the players you have. And when you arrive in a squad, the players are already under contract. It takes almost three years to turn a squad over, so you have to be up and running very quickly.

So what room is there for convictions?

I do have convictions! I was lucky to play only for big clubs, with quite different and strongly marked cultures. At Toulon, it was very much focused on the physical battle. I was also strongly marked by my time at Toulouse and I kept a lot from it about versatility, the way of playing, covering positions during a match – everyone has to be able to make a pass, adapt or read a situation – from the prop right through to the full-back. In England, we were more on the physical and athletic dimension. So I tried to make a mix of all that. Even though I have a pronounced taste for the physical battle, I like coaching a team that attacks with ball in hand. But to be able to attack, it first has to win the battle.

“You must not make players play against their nature”

What do you do first when you arrive at a club?

First of all, you have to scan where you are and who you are talking to. Because as I said – and I realised it over time – what worked in one place does not work in another. You have to see straight away how you are going to manage the group with its different personalities. The way rugby is lived at Toulon, at Toulouse, at Racing is completely different and you have to adapt. Then you need a framework around the team, even if there can be total freedom inside that framework, and certain rules to respect. I am thinking of discipline and squad life. I want the players to live the club, which is not just a place to train. We are lucky to do a job that is a passion, so we may as well do it to win.

Has the reality on the pitch ever pushed you to change your game plan?

When I left La Rochelle, we had reached a fairly attack-minded style of play with a quick three-quarter line and fairly versatile players up front. When I arrived at Toulon, we were switching to another model, with a talented three-quarter line but not at all the same body type. At La Rochelle, we were averaging 85 kg and at Toulon we were more like 105-110 kg. I wanted to make them play the same way and I got it wrong. As much as I sometimes like to put players in discomfort, if you want to take everyone with you very quickly, you have to put them very quickly into a register they master and not make them play against their nature.

How much emotion goes into the way you manage people?

I managed purely on emotion for years at La Rochelle, where it was a project in which we went from Pro D2 all the way to the Top 14 semi-finals. So you build a different bond with the lads. When you take a player nobody knows in Pro D2 and three years later he is playing in the Top 14 and being picked for France, you inevitably have a different relationship, one I have always kept with them. And then, when you arrive at Toulon in a squad already in place, copy-and-paste does not work, you have to bring the players with you differently. I can be hard because, for me, there is an order: the club, the team and the player. The player cannot be above the club or the team and the clashes I have had have often been linked to that. As for pure management, a player can ask me anything, and so I can ask him anything in rugby terms.

Collazo the bogeyman: cliché or reality?

These days people stick labels on you and put people in boxes. A coach who is happy when he loses, I do not know any. A coach who, at a given moment on the touchline, needs to shout to get an instruction across, there are some every weekend in the Top 14. So I am no exception to the rule. I would define myself as someone who lives the thing: you belong to an institution that represents something and even if you were not a player there, you have to defend that institution, its values and a certain ethic.

In what areas have you evolved in terms of management?

I understood over time that you cannot coach players seven days a week. There are days when you have to keep them busy, others when you have to entertain them and others when you have to coach them. Once I had understood that, I think I improved in my management and even gained in the quality of what I say, because you are not constantly running on energy. It is a job that demands a lot of it, energy, and speaking time too. So it must not be diluted, because otherwise you no longer have any impact on things day to day and you no longer have any impact at the weekend.

“I struggle with a lack of frankness and with intellectual dishonesty”

Your relationship with the press and journalists also took a lot of energy out of you for a long time…

If you are bland, then indeed nothing will happen. Conversely, if you are a character who can throw out barbs, the media treatment is completely different. I am not going to complain. There are things that can annoy me but it is either that the question is not appropriate, or that it makes no sense, and I struggle with a lack of frankness. Then again, they put you in a box and you get the media treatment you deserve. Sometimes it has been good and sometimes the journalists have had no qualms about finishing me off, but that is part of the deal.

And?

Then again, there are battles I no longer fight because they are lost before they start. In the past I was often into tit-for-tat. But I also gauge things on the personality and the level of the question. When it is not up to standard, my answer matches it. On personality, I like frankness, I do not like things left unsaid, not when people come in through the back door and beat around the bush. I have had conflictual relations with certain journalists for a very long time but there have perhaps also been failings on their side. And I have also kept very good relations with some. Today, let’s say that I do more sifting and that I am less into the instant reply. If the question is only there to throw a barb and get a reaction, let’s say I am past that age.

What has made, or can still make, you “pull the pin”?

The clashes I have had were often also about protecting the team and the institution. When you are winning, there is no problem, but when you are losing… If there is an attack, I do not take it as being aimed directly at me but often at the team or the club and I tend to go straight into battle. Well, today, as I said, going into battle does not bother me but I still prefer to put my energy elsewhere. Once again, I gauge it on the person in front of me and I struggle with a lack of frankness and with intellectual dishonesty. I sense it in a person and from that point on, yes, there can be conflict.