Bath performance director Ian McGeechan talks with head coach Steve Meehan at the Rec
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In an interview with The Guardian, the new director of rugby at the Rec looks forward to the new Aviva Premiership season, explains why relegation from England's top flight should be scrapped and also refuses to rule out an eighth tour with the British & Irish Lions.
"My wife has given up on me growing up by now," Ian McGeechan says cheerfully on a rainy afternoon in Bath, as he looks forward to the start of yet another rugby season with the same enthusiasm he felt when he was 19. "I made the Headingley first team in 1965 and so it's been 45 consecutive years for me in the game now," the revered coach of the Lions and the new director of rugby at Bath remembers as he returns to his birthplace of Leeds this Sunday.
"I'm going back home," the 63-year-old Scot says, as Bath play Leeds in their opening Premiership match, "and it feels like I've come full circle. I'll have the same buzz on Sunday as I did all those years ago. The only difference is that, as coach, you get a much deeper satisfaction seeing what you take from the training pitch into a competitive match. But, otherwise, it's just the same thrill and that's why my wife keeps telling me I've never grown up."
"Yet after his experiences at the heart of the Lions, with his seven tours seeing him assume the role of head coach four times, there is hardly a more venerable presence in British and Irish rugby. McGeechan has twice won the European Cup as coach, with Northampton and Wasps, as well as the Premiership with the latter club. Those achievements explain why Bath were determined to appoint him after they were bought earlier this year by Bruce Craig - who, apart from being the Premiership's wealthiest owner, displays a genuine passion for the club."
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