JOE FORD admits it was brave of Doncaster to take a punt of him after a coaching baptism of fire at Yorkshire Carnegie.
The former Leicester, Sale, Northampton and Leeds fly-half spent the first half of last season at Headingley as a rookie head coach.
To no-one's surprise it turned out to be thankless task, due to the club's financial constraints, and they were rock bottom of the Championship when he left shortly after Phil Davies returned as boss at the turn of the year.
Ford told TRP: “Leeds was very difficult. Perhaps it was naivety on my part, but I didn't think it would be as tough as it was with all the stuff off the field.
“Just getting 23 players on the pitch every week was hard, you were ringing up players on the Friday morning before the cut-off to register them pretty much every week because the squad was so small.
“Week on week you'd get people pulling out which I found really frustrating at the time. You'd name a team on the Tuesday and by Saturday you'd have five players who'd never trained with you before.
“But looking back, with the money they were getting paid and some of them having to travel two hours to get training, you can't really blame them. To be fair they were brilliant. Maybe that's because a lot of them wouldn't have played at that level ordinarily so I think they just tried to enjoy it even though we were getting battered every week.”
Having enjoyed three previous spells in Leeds as a player, Ford admits it was a shame the way things panned out.
They say adversity makes you stronger, however, and the 29-year-old is now looking to using the lessons he learnt as backs coach of the Knights.
“I gave up a couple of playing opportunities (in America and France) the previous summer to take it on and start my coaching career,” said Ford, who has also been busy working behind the scenes getting Kobe Coffee, the café he opened with his brother, England fly-half George, up and running.
“Part of the reason why I went back to Leeds was because they had been so good to me in the previous spells. I thought it would be nice to give something back, so it was disappointing the way it ended, but I gave it everything. I was probably fighting a losing battle to be honest.
“I learnt a lot there, though. My dad (Leicester coach, Mike) came up and did a couple of sessions with us and Lanny (Stuart Lancaster) did a bit as well so I had a lot of good support.
“(Former DoR) Martyn Wood was brilliant with me and Phil was as well when he came in, and (MD) Chris Gibson, so I wasn't on my own. I was lucky from that point of view.”
Now, Ford is waiting patiently to get to work with the Doncaster backs, including Sam Olver whose career has taken a similar route to Ford's in that he's had a taste of Premiership rugby (at Northampton) but made more of an impression in the Championship.
“I'm really grateful to Bodes (Steve Boden, Knights head coach) for giving me the opportunity. With the way it went at Leeds, he is probably mad to!”
“I've watched Sam a few times and I've played against him, and he is very good.
“The thing that stands out the most for me is that he is not the biggest but one of the toughest.”
Olver will be rivalled for the No.10 jersey not by Ford – he insists his future lays purely in coaching – but by Charlie Foley and, according to reports from Wales, Billy McBryde, the son of former Wales assistant coach, Robin.
Having previously played for Llanelli, the Scarlets and Wales U20s, McBryde caught the eye playing for North Wales outfit RGC last season.
