Steve Diamond: ‘The league would be bolloxed with nine teams’

Having been at the sharp end of what happened at the now defunct Worcester Warriors, Steve Diamond knows he won’t be able to write his own cheques and buy Newcastle out of trouble.

Speaking at his media unveiling on Wednesday ahead of his official start date next Monday as the Falcons’ consultant director of rugby, Diamond has come on board with the club rooted to the bottom of the Gallagher Premiership.

The Falcons have lost all 12 of their league matches to date with their only victory – aside from the Premiership Rugby Cup – coming against Perpignan in the European Challenge Cup, the match that fell directly after director of Alex Codling was stood down.

Newcastle currently don’t spend up to the league’s £5million salary cap and with that figure potentially returning back to the pre-covid budget of £6.4m, the Falcons’ ability to compete will be made that much harder.

Diamond epitomises northern grit, though, and he is ready to roll his sleeves up and make the best of what he has got to work with. After all, he has a tried and trusted record in make-do-and-mend management. “Ultimately, I’m confident I can get a highly competitive squad here and not be spending to cap,” he said.

“From day one, I’m a realist, I’m a businessman. I come in and know what I’m going spend, so you will not hear me whinging in six to eight months’ time that we are spending less than the others.

“I operated under the salary cap for seven or eight years at Sale and finished sixth and seventh every year, so it doesn’t have a detrimental effect on the building of your squad. It has an effect if you are trying to win the competition – and it would be difficult to do that.

“However, to be highly competitive, to continue to build the community around Newcastle and to build your crowds, which they have done remarkably well with seeing as we have lost 14 games, you become the underdog.

“At Sale we were the underdog and we could lick a lot of teams at home, not often away from home, and that is the job in hand, to become highly respected and competitive in the Premiership.”

What Diamond can’t offer players in money will be compensated by an equally precious commodity – game time. Over the coming months, the 54-year-old will be selling that side of the club to the young players he wants to keep, although it may be too late to retain highly-rated prop Phil Brantingham, with reports saying the native north-east player has signed for Saracens.

“At Sale, for a long time, we had people moving around; Sale became a bit of a selling club in the day because the big noises around the country, most of which were breaking the salary cap at the time, would come and poach your players, and that is always going to be the case.

“What not everybody realises is that Newcastle has a mine within a 100 miles of it which churns out players of high quality and my job is convincing those young players to stay, maybe for a short period initially but proving they will get looked after and will get game time.

“There is a unique opportunity up at Newcastle to play and my career has shown endless numbers of players that have stayed with me in those early years have turned into internationals by good management and mainly by being given an opportunity to play lots of games – and that is what Newcastle offers.

“Or you can go to a club like Bath and they sit in fourth or fifth spot and don’t play, but that will be their choice. If you want to play first-team rugby in the Premiership, the most competitive league around, stay at Newcastle – that will be the message from Monday.”

Diamond is a man that clubs turn to for help in a crisis. It happened at Sale, Edinburgh and also Worcester, whom he led to their first major trophy in 2022 when they won the Premiership Cup with an extra-time victory against London Irish.

Both those finalists no longer exist as going entities, the Warriors and Irish joining Wasps, Jersey Reds and the administration-stricken Melbourne Rebels on rugby’s scrapheap, hence the reason Diamond fully buys into the Falcons’ sustainable approach.

“It has got to remain the case. There has been three examples (in the Premiership), an example in Australia, an example in the Championship of clubs that have gone into the oblivion and Newcastle is not going to be one of those clubs for various reasons.

“One, the owner is very proud of what he has created here and kept the legacy going for 140-odd years and two, the league would be bolloxed with nine teams so everybody needs Newcastle.”

Once reassured that Newcastle’s owners were in it for the long haul, Diamond jumped at the chance to be back involved in the nitty-gritty of rugby management as he bids to drag the league’s most northerly team up from its bootstraps. While excited at the prospect of working with the likes of Adam Radwan, he is under no illusions about the task ahead.

“We are shit at lineout, terrible at the scrum, we are 10th out of 10 in defence and we are 10th out of 10 in attack, so you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work out where we start – set-piece and defence. I have got the best pre-season in the world, I have got from February 1 to September to get things sorted.

“I have got a talented bunch of young kids who, once managed correctly and given a plan, will go from strength to strength. We have got four lads in the U20s at the minute, one (Jamie Blamire) in the England team, so I see a lot of positives. I don’t see many negatives.

“People are p***ed off with where they are in the league and they want to get out of this position, and that’s good. Attitude is the first thing you need when you come to places that haven’t traditionally done well, so we have got attitude.

“I’ll put the belief in them the knowledge and the skill, and we will be motivated. I don’t know how I get it wrong really. I’m looking forward to changing the fortunes up here.”