Six years ago, after Ben Ryan coached a Fiji team comprising hotel porters and a prison warden to Olympic rugby sevens gold, he was rewarded with a three-acre plot of land in the South Pacific, given the highest honour the island nation can bestow and soon discovered his face embossed across commemorative bank notes and coins. A job that began with Ryan going unpaid and stumping up for petrol in the bus to take the team to training ended with an extraordinary victory in Rio de Janeiro, after which he told of plans to unwind by playing golf and watching Brentford, where he has long been a season‑ticket holder.
Brentford is now also Ryan’s place of work after he was appointed the club’s director of elite performance late last month. In a summer transfer window in which Brentford hope to complete the eye-catching signings of Aaron Hickey, a 20-year-old Glaswegian full-back from Bologna, and Keane Lewis-Potter, a 21-year-old forward from Hull, the arrival of Ryan is perhaps most intriguing given the paucity of cross-pollination between football and other sports.
