A big weekend awaits John Mitchell. On Saturday he turns 60 and the following day he takes charge of his first women’s Six Nations game as head coach of England. Can the seen-it-all Kiwi take them to the next level? The union between the bespectacled former All Blacks head coach and an ambitious bunch of Red Roses from a different generation is certainly an intriguing one.
Because when the Rugby Football Union opted against installing a Sarina Wiegman‑type figure to deliver the women’s World Cup on home soil next year, it did not delight everybody. Even Mitchell believes the days of men heading up women’s programmes are numbered – “The future’s definitely going to be a female coach” – and the appointment of England’s Jo Yapp to the top job in Australia has stirred the whole debate afresh.
On the one hand hiring the much-travelled Mitchell makes a lot of sense. He was just 37 when he became the All Blacks coach in 2001 and his CV has included stints with England’s men under Clive Woodward and Eddie Jones. Few coaches, male or female, have a keener global grasp – “My record speaks for itself in terms of winning Test matches and I know this arena like the back of my hand” – of high performance settings. So when Mitchell suggests he was “probably more advanced in terms of dealing with pressure” than other candidates he has the scar tissue to prove it. “When you’ve been close to the pinnacle of the game … there have been some gold nuggets I’ve taken from that.”
Even so, appointing a male supremo at this high-profile juncture was akin, for some, to overlooking Taylor Swift and asking Status Quo to headline instead. Mitchell is no Swiftie and when he sang his squad initiation song there were no Dua Lipa dance moves either. “I’ve used Wonderwall by Oasis before but on this occasion it was Molly Malone. Often you try to hurry back to your seat but, once I could see I had a connection, I walked down the middle of the bus and put more emphasis into the chorus …”
There is much more to international coaching than confident karaoke but, equally, there is far more to Mitchell than people assume. In his recent book Danny Cipriani’s memorable description – “Tall, bald as a coot and with different coloured eyes, like David Bowie” – was accompanied by an uproarious story about a Sale team social following a win over London Irish. “By the end of the night I’m trying to judo roll John into one of those big food bins you get behind restaurants. Funnily enough, he loves that.”
That was then. These days “Mitch” lives quietly in Surrey with his South African wife, Julie, supports Woking FC, prefers to put on his glasses for photographs, enjoys listening to London Grammar and is at his happiest – “That’s my peaceful place” – barbecuing in his backyard. A grim episode in 2010, when he was stabbed in the thigh and upper arm by an intruder at his Johannesburg home, clearly prompted a reappraisal of his priorities in life and he also grimaces slightly when recalling the macho rugby culture of 1980s Waikato, when he used to share a flat with teammate Warren Gatland. “Maybe in the mens’ game – and I fell into the trap in my younger playing days – you need to adopt a certain mental state as a man. There’s a game coming and you’re serious.”
The whole mental side of sport increasingly fascinates him. His Australian‑based daughter is a psychologist in Perth while his son, Daryl, has blossomed into a standout New Zealand Test cricketer. As a coach, though, it has taken time to become more empathetic. “My leadership was pretty direct. It was the powerful truth. I wasn’t afraid to make hard decisions. When I look back on a lot of them I think they were the right decisions. But could I have articulated those decisions better? Yes.”
Those old competitive fires still smoulder, though. And amid the self-deprecating references to his old-school cauliflower ears – “One looks like a kidney, the other’s a dried apricot” – it swiftly becomes clear he feels that gender has little bearing on coaching effectiveness. “I try and deal with the human being. Everyone keeps asking: what are the differences between coaching men and women? I don’t need to know the differences. I just need to deal with what’s in front of me. And then respond to it. If the context is something I’m knowledgeable about, I’ll definitely have a strong view. If not, I’ll listen, watch and ask questions.”
Mitchell has subsequently been collating his own first‑hand insights, alongside his assistants Louis Deacon, Lou Meadows and Sarah Hunter, having already spent time with the Red Roses during last year’s WXV competition. Disappointment, he reckons, can take longer to shake for some female players but in other areas they leave the men behind. “These women are hugely driven but I like the way they’re able to be themselves. These girls are able to have joy and fun. But then, all of a sudden, they just turn the switch on. As long as we keep that balance that’s fine by me.”
In truth, England have nothing to fear in this Six Nations having collected the past five successive titles but, among other things, Mitchell is keen to instil a more flexible approach. “In professional sport you have to prepare for the worst case. Maybe in the last World Cup we didn’t do that.”
In addition he wants his squad to aim high. “The potential of this side is huge. We’ve been a very good team but we want to be an outstanding team. As good as we have been in the Six Nations, how do we get done [win a World Cup] what we haven’t done for 11 years? We have to successfully climb that peak. And we’ve still got to fill the top tier of green seats at Twickenham. This team has a fantastic identity but it’s still on its way to becoming fully immersed in English rugby culture.”
There is, in summary, a hint of the Heston Blumenthals about Mitchell as he prepares to apply a metaphorical blow torch to the England women’s game and erase memories of his abrupt exit from Jones’s England men’s camp in July 2021. “I’d got to a point where I couldn’t give Eddie 24‑7 any more. Basically I just woke up, aged 57, and thought: ‘I value things differently, I need to stand up for myself.’ At the end of the day you’ve got to respond to a head coach’s ways and their leadership. If you can’t fit into that, you need to be honest.”
His varied coaching journey, he suggests, has also opened his eyes to “my blind spots”. What might those be? “When your ego gets in the road and you don’t remain open and aware.” OK, so does he think he will be the last male Red Roses head coach? “No, I don’t sense that. I’m not here just to do one term, either.” When might a woman take control, then? “The timing will be right at some stage. It’s just when that is. At the end of the day it’s still about making sure the girls have the right capacity to play the game we want and making sure they have the right behaviours. It’s still about tactical clarity. Regardless of the way people try to create a separation between the two, you still come back to the main ingredients.”
England’s women may just have found the catalyst – irrespective of gender – to deliver their elusive World Cup dream.
