Rugby: Spotlight squarely on North Harbour's coaching team

Craig Dowd says North Harbour must toughen their defence. Photo / Brett Phibbs

North Harbour differ from most, if not all, the other 13 championship teams in that much of the focus, at least initially, will fall on their coaches.

Neither Craig Dowd nor Jeff Wilson will relish that. After all, the game is about the players. But their appointment in charge of a team which has serially under-performed in the Air New Zealand Cup down the years is undoubtedly intriguing.

It wasn't a universally popular decision by North Harbour on that side of the bridge. There was a view that the appointment should have been made in-house; that is, that someone inured in the ways of the union would be a better fit.

Instead two high-profile All Blacks with no link to the union got the job. Dowd, 39, with 60 tests as an All Black loosehead prop from 1993-2000 to call on, has joined Wilson, four years younger, also with 60 tests and one of the country's great wings.

It's a bold move and inevitably they'll be in the sights of the nay-sayers should things go wrong on the park. But Dowd is unfazed and his attitude to the issue is spot on.

"Five minutes after we were appointed we'd started on planning," he said yesterday. "I'm not going to dwell on who said what. That's not our concern.

"After Jeff and I got appointed, we just rolled our sleeves up and got on with it."

Dowd's linking up with his old All Black teammate is pretty matter of fact too.

"Back when we were playing we were completely different people. Jeff would be standing out on the wing scoring great tries; all I had to do was hold the scrum up and get the ball out there and he'd do some magic.

"We've gone through life experiences, got a bit older and our crossroads have just met. That's all."

Dowd spent four years playing at Wasps in England, came under the tutelage of the outstanding Warren Gatland, then the renowned Ian McGeechan, with whom Dowd worked as forwards coach.

Before that, he did some coaching of the Wasps development team while still playing, helping former Waikato coach Tony Hanks out. Shaun Edwards, the fiery former Britain league halfback and now Gatland's highly regarded righthand man at Wales, was there too. All in all, it was an ideal apprenticeship.

Dowd likes where Harbour are in terms of readiness and makes no bones about where the on-field priority lies. He played against too many Harbour teams in his Auckland career where flair and dash were let down by defensive shortcomings.

So ...

"We want to get a reputation as a team with a very solid, aggressive defence, so people will know they've played North Harbour," he said. "We know we can score tries, we've got the firepower to do that."

Dowd and Wilson aren't getting twitchy over the relegation issue which will hover over the championship right to the end, and beyond, with the bottom four not the only measurement to decide which four teams get relegated.

Indeed, Dowd sounds almost bullish. His message is if Harbour play as he believes they can then it won't even be an issue.

"It's peripheral, definitely not in the forefront of our plans.

"Where we finish and who gets relegated is not something we are going in extremely worried about. We need to worry about Canterbury this weekend. That's the attitude we're going to have."

For those teams with title aspirations, the change in format makes things just that bit harder. Quarter-finals have been replaced by a full round robin to find four semifinalists. But Dowd is not into specific targets.

"We're not saying we're going to finish here or there. If we get good performances and come off knowing we've given our all, then we'll be happy."