Hawke's Bay provided Tom Coventry an ideal platform.
London Irish-bound Tom Coventry will be jetting off at the end of the Super Rugby season mindful of how Hawke's Bay provided him the ideal platform to an enviable coaching career.
"That's where it all started as a schoolteacher and an amateur coach," the former Hawke's Bay Magpies co-coach said last night via a media teleconference from Hamilton in officially announcing he had signed a deal to be head coach of a team who are sitting 11th on the English Premiership table with just four wins this term.
Chiefs assistant coach Coventry, who will step out from the shadows of deputising at an elite level in his career, will replace Australian Brian Smith who is leaving suddenly due to family reasons.
London Irish forwards coach Glenn Delaney will assume the mantle for the rest of the season.
Coventry described his ascendancy from the Magpies as "two good-luck charms" - the Chiefs and now London Irish.
The former Waikato loosie and Peter Russell together coached the Magpies for five seasons in the domestic national provincial championship from 2007 to 2011.
Russell's axing in October 2011 ended a partnership with Coventry that took the Magpies to three consecutive semifinals in the former Air New Zealand Cup (2007-09) and victory in the second-tier Championship final of the 2011 ITM Cup that earned promotion to the 2012 Premiership campaign.
Coventry reflected on the "fantastic times" he had with Russell and how his children lived in the Bay and attended schools here and were "through and through Hawke's Bay".
Asked if there was a possibility he would consider the former Highlanders assistant coach in his London Irish coaching stable, Coventry said: "Maybe there'll be an opportunity for Pete and I to get together again. You can never count against that happening."
While Coventry hadn't been in contact with Russell lately, he understood the former Newcastle Falcons coach (England) was enjoying the new arrival to the Russell family in Napier and in the hunt for New Zealand contracts as well as working with Murray Mexted in some capacity.
Russell missed out on the Hurricanes head coach job after quitting Newcastle early last year to channel his energy for this year's Super campaign.
Coventry last night said any suggestions that he was vying for the Canes job, too, were media concoctions. He also said the end of his London Irish tenure in 2017 was purely coincidental with the end of the All Blacks' coaching contracts.
Magpies prop Ben Franks, of Canterbury, has also been linked with London Irish but Coventry said the 42-match All Black had signed his deal with the club before his appointment.
He would be relieved to be working alongside a gritty player he had previously had to plot against to nullify his impact.
The Manu Samoa coach said players he had mentored from the Bay or anywhere in the country certainly stood a chance of catching his eye with the London Irish in his three-year tenure.
New Zealand players were "good buggers" but he emphasised that signings boiled down to the "type of person".
Coventry found traction with former All Black hooker Hika Elliot and Ben Tameifuna in the Chiefs' environment after the Magpies cut them loose amid concerns over their discipline.
While Coventry was sad to be severing ties with the Chiefs and it was a tough decision, he was delighted to take up new challenges abroad, although he had to convince his wife the English winter could be just as exciting for her as it was going to be for him.
He had sat down with ex-London Irish captain Bob Casey to nut out the deal and had taken into account the club's new facilities, including a state-of-the-art stadium at Hazelwood in Sunbury on Thames.
Adapting to a forward-orientated "type of football" will be a challenge for him, with the "lateral" approach in Super Rugby.