'That will be where all our energy lies' - Steve Diamond: The Newcastle Falcons five year plan

In January 2024, Newcastle Falcons brought in one of the most astute operators in the game to lead their rebuilding efforts, Steve Diamond. Today the head coach laid out his five-year plan in a meeting with the media.

It can be argued that no rugby fan particularly enjoyed seeing Newcastle Falcons languishing at the bottom of the Gallagher Premiership last season. It was hard to watch one of the stalwart clubs of English rugby take such a battering week in and week out during such a gruelling campaign.

Despite the optimism that came with the appointment of the former Sale Sharks boss, the results on the field failed to recover as the season progressed, with Newcastle remarkably ending the season with zero wins and just five points on the board.

That was, however, last season. Since then, Steve has had an entire summer to continue his rebuilding efforts, bringing in plenty of talent from outside, as well as developing the younger prospects already a part of the squad.

Falcons first match against Bristol didn’t quite kick their season off how they would have hoped, but Steve is confident that they’re on their way back up.

“We’re a good collective bunch with what the lads have been through here in previous regimes,” Steve said.

“We should have psychologists in here daily because they’ve gone through hell and back over the last two years, and what we’ve done is freed them up and given them some confidence.

“We’re going in the right direction as long as we keep making strides week in and week out, and collectively defensively we’re getting better than we’ve ever been over the last 2-3 years.”

There’s no denying the sides’ perseverance, but when your side fails to notch a single try during the opening home game, questions start to get asked.

“We’ve got to take our opportunities”, Steve explained.

“In the game against Bristol last week we had five or six opportunities and we didn’t take them.

“Part of coaching the team and leading the team is showing them the opportunities we missed. Not ‘why didn’t you do that’, but if you were a little clearer of thought then the opportunities were there to take, and we didn’t take them.

“So, if you look at the scoreline last week, if we can take one or two of those opportunities then it’d be within seven points and we would be getting a bonus point for a loss.”

These short-term goals are vital to ensuring a steady but certain rise from the ashes, but in terms of a longer view, we asked how the club could steady themselves and push on to compete with the very best in years to come.

“If you look at where Newcastle have been, and where we’re going to go in the next three to five years, this will probably be a very difficult season for us, but we will learn a lot which will stay with us for the next period of time when we build that success.

“The first thing to do is get ourselves recognised as a highly competitive team in the Premiership, and that will be where all our energy lies. Over the next two or three years the next step would be to qualify for the main European competition, which all the players want to play in.

The club performance is of course only one part of any business growth – it’s also about taking care of those inside the setup and ensuring that they are rewarded and supported for the good work they provide – an integral part of Diamond’s journey.

“To ride alongside this I want people like Jamie Blamire, who is a super player, to get recognised by England more. I want the plethora of academy graduates coming through to want to stay at Newcastle, unlike most recent times, and stay for the right reason.

“I’m quite experienced, and probably more so than a lot in the league, of building things. I was at Sale for 10/11 years and the academy at Sale now is a hugely rich conveyor belt of talent, and we haven’t got the same conveyor belt here for one reason or another.

“Of course we don’t spend the same budget on the team as the other clubs, but what we will be doing behind the scenes is putting the right infrastructure in place. This means that if I get run over by a bus it only takes one person to come in, you’re not changing the whole thing – which basically happened at Sale if I’m honest.”

So, if the budget isn’t stretching as far as other clubs, how does a club like Newcastle remain competitive with clubs at the other end of the table?

“There’s nothing better than having kids who come within 50 miles of the club to play here. It gives you a real bonus if you’re literally picking home grown talent and Newcastle have always done that.

“If I’m honest the academy has always been reasonably successful, because the size of the region and the rugby playing area you’re going to get these kids popping up all the time. What I’m thinking is we can get miles more than we’ve ever had, so in five years time we an have 70% of this squad would be made-up from Tyne and Wear, Durham, Northumberland and Cumbria which is such a vast area.”