The Dragons have been urged to snap up Danny Wilson now he is a free agent after being shown the door by Glasgow. The former Cardiff Blues boss was sacked from his role as head coach at the Scottish side following their 76-14 defeat to Leinster in the United Rugby Championship quarter-finals.
But former Wales forward Andrew Coombs is convinced Wilson still has a lot to offer and speaks from personal experience having played under him at the Dragons. You can read about Coombs' own rugby story here.
There has been talk of the region shaking-up their backroom team with director of rugby Dean Ryan moving into more of a mentoring role and a head coach being appointed. The 10-times capped Coombs, now a TV pundit, believes Wilson would be the perfect fit for that new role. He was very impressed with the former hooker during his spell as forwards coach at the Dragons a decade or so again.
“It was just his ability to teach you new things," he told WalesOnline. "First and foremost as a player, you need a coach who can teach you something you don’t already know. They were good things as well. It was the way he delivered as a coach and how he improved individual players and the team collectively.
“He was a set-piece forwards coach with us and he improved our scrum a hell of a lot. He taught us a way of combating things. In terms of the lineouts, he introduced our team to boost lifting which, at the time, wasn’t known. We hadn’t seen anybody else doing it.
“He came in and he was more or less asking us just to throw players as high as we could, leave them go and catch them on the way back down. At the time it was just like ‘this guy’s crazy, he’s off his head’. You would have Luke Charteris who was probably 10ft with his arms extended throwing you another 3ft in the air because he’s the strongest guy around and you are falling from mental heights.
"But you trusted Danny. He was that good at doing things, you did have trust in him. He was really demanding as a coach, he would set targets. Against certain teams, he would ask you for two or three driving maul tries and we were capable of getting them with the techniques he put in place.
“For me, he is a tactician and a real rugby brain. From a rugby brain point of view, I think he is the best coach I have worked with. Somebody like Warren Gatland is a motivator and deals with things in different ways. But Danny would break something down and analyse it so deeply. I think that’s where he’s been successful as a coach, his understanding of the game and the way he analyses things.”
Coombs also saw Wilson’s man management develop during his two years at Rodney Parade, ahead of his move to the Scarlets and a successful stint at the helm of Wales U20s.
“When he came into the Dragons, he was new to professional rugby", Coombs said. "It was his first proper role. He was quite a young coach. He had just come in from London Welsh.
“He was quite demanding and quite hard on people, but towards the end, when he had signed the deal to go to the Scarlets, you could see him just relax and you got an understanding of his true character and his personality. I thought he coached better in his last few months when the pressure was off, he was moving on and he was able to relax a bit more.
"You saw the best of him then. Speaking to other players about him, I think he has maintained that. He was able to enjoy coaching more when he was able to relax.
“He was a great guy. After games, if you were playing away in France or whatever, he would have a beer with the players. He was a really sociable person off the field outside of the game, which is really important.
“I just think he was an all-round good coach and a good bloke. If you look at what he has done since, his CV is pretty impressive, with the success he had at Cardiff and to go on and coach a national team like Scotland.”
It was a dramatic falling away for Wilson at Glasgow, who were third in the United Rugby Championship in April and through to the last eight in the European Challenge Cup, only to lose seven of their final 10 matches in all competitions, culminating in the 12-try thumping at the hands of Leinster. But Coombs believes his former boss has more than enough previous credit in the bank to outweigh that unhappy ending.
“As a player or a coach, sometimes it can just not go well for you at a club for one reason or another,” he says.
“If you look at Danny’s CV, he has had so much success. I am not just talking about results, but the way he improves players and what players say about him. You speak to any players that have been coached by him and they will probably have the same opinion as me. He is a tactician.
“So I think he has had enough success in his time as a coach to get straight back into another job. I don’t think the quarter-final result against Leinster is going to impact him too much in that respect. Certainly, if I was David Buttress, I would be knocking on Danny’s door.
“With the Dragons, I think they are opening up a spot for a coach to come in. I think it’s really important they find a really good coach before making that step. Danny is the perfect person in my book. His CV speaks for itself really, other than the quarter-final last weekend.
“It would be great timing for him to come back now. If he is successful with the Dragons, who knows about his future with Wales. I think he has certainly got the potential and knowledge to coach at that standard.”
