Given the precarious nature of coaching as a profession, staying in charge of one team for 500 matches is a truly remarkable achievement. Yet that’s precisely the milestone Mike Rayer has reached after 17 years at the helm of English Championship club Bedford RFC.
The former Cardiff and Wales full-back hit his landmark last weekend, as his players celebrated the occasion in style with a 10-try 62-21 victory away to London Irish. You can read more about his fascinating rugby life here.
Having played for the club for a couple of seasons in the late 1990s, either side of two spells at the Arms Park, Rayer returned to Goldington Road in 2005 to take up the post of Director of Rugby. He’s still there today, so what does he put his longevity down to?
“It’s a good question!” he replies. “You kind of live in the moment, don’t you? I did as a player really. I was never a big one for ambition and drivers. It’s always been kind of week to week with me. It helped having a brilliant chairman here for the first 15 years and I’ve now got a supportive board.
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"It has been a good fit for me. Bedford is a massive rugby town and the people are very supportive around the place. There have been a couple of times where the whole community has come together to clear snow off the pitch to get games on. That’s why you stay, isn’t it, when you see days like that. It’s the Boxing Days, with 5,000 people in here, the last minute victories.”
Rayer reveals there have been various opportunities to return home to Wales along the way.
“I had interest from the Dragons and spoke to them and there were a couple of conversations with Cardiff. But it’s all about that timing thing, isn’t it? I didn’t really feel I had done this role long enough to leave it and move on, so it never materialised.
“I am fairly loyal. I think loyalty and continuity are key ingredients of what I belong to. It never felt quite right in terms of timing and, let’s be honest, I think that ship has sailed. They are quite pressurised jobs at the end of the day, aren’t they? At 57, do I want that? I’m not sure. You never say never, but the goldfish bowl seems a long way away at the moment.”
Renowned as an attack-minded full-back, with a trademark sidestep, the 21-times capped Rayer has brought the same philosophy to his coaching.
“We’ve played a great style of rugby over the years and that’s the bit I’m most proud of. When I am recruiting, I do look for players that would fit the style I want to play. It’s what the people of Bedford have become accustomed to. We are fighting against football and great Premiership rugby clubs in Northampton and Saracens. So for us to keep getting people through the gates here, I feel we have got to play entertaining rugby and it suits what I am about. There have been some great seasons where we played some brilliant rugby.”
Rayer also prides himself on the way he has handled the players who have worked under him at the club.
“When you first come into it fresh from your playing days, the man-management stuff comes a lot easier because you are almost on a level with these guys and understand what they have gone through. Over the years, you tend to become a bit more cold about things and hardened, if you like, when you have got to let somebody go at the end of the season or you have had a bad run of games. Your skin gets a little bit thicker year on year.
“I have always prided myself on the man management stuff. You don’t always get it right. I probably got more things right in my first four or five years than I have done subsequently, but I still like to think I get a lot of them right in that man management space. There are some really good players and people gone through here and there have been some unbelievably proud moments in terms of results.”
Rayer looks back on reaching the 2013 Championship play-off final, where they faced Newcastle over two legs, as a real highlight, while he has consistently managed to keep Bedford in the top half of the table. This year, with the regular league programme completed, they have finished fifth.
He is quick to stress the part his wife Debra has played in supporting him over the years.
“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for my wife. She’s been my rugby administrator for the last 12 years. I can see her now! She works opposite me in the office. I get to wear the trousers from 9 to 5 and then she takes over after that. It’s important to have people around you that you can trust, with contracts and stuff around.”
Rayer remains an interested observer of Welsh rugby and, as a fellow coach, he can identify with what the under-pressure Wayne Pivac is going through at the moment after a disappointing Six Nations campaign.
“I empathise with Wayne massively. It’s a bloody goldfish bowl in Wales and there is the wider social media aspect of it. There is definitely more scrutiny now and more and more ex-players in the punditry business.
“The coaches are all desperate to do the best they can. The obvious thing at the moment is a team in transition with a few injuries to big players. They’ve got to persevere with what they think are their best 30 or 32 players and work out what’s the best way to play with what’s available there.
“You just want to see them play a bit more. We have had an era of incredible success playing a certain way and that’s going to take time to change. You have got to adapt to what’s coming through. You have got to look at the pathway and what skills you want these kids to have to reproduce it at regional and international level.”
Having mentioned the regions, one wonder what he makes of the current structure in Wales? You can read the thoughts of his former team-mate and Arms Park boss Dai Young on the major issues here.
“It’s funny," said Rayer. "I had an informal chat with Cardiff Blues a couple of years ago and I was honest with them. I said ‘I have no affinity with Cardiff Blues, I really don’t’. That’s because I’m a Blue and Black.
“I obviously helped set up the regional Academy in the early days and it was great to see some of those players go on and play international rugby, but I didn’t really have an affinity to that Blues brand. I am an old school Blue and Black, unfortunately or fortunately. That’s just the way I feel. It’s interesting they have actually gone back to that brand now. I said there is a lot to be said for that.
“Everyone goes on about modernising this and modernising that. But certainly in Wales and England the heritage and history is all in the club game. The Irish provinces have always been in place and it was an easy fit for them. In Wales, club rugby was all about Cardiff and Newport playing four times a year, getting 52,000 people in there. Historically the clubs have been the brands. At Cardiff, we always had players coming to play for us from the valleys and beyond.”
Father-of-two Rayer will be 57 in July, so what does the future hold for him?
“I can’t keep doing this forever, but I would certainly love to stay involved in rugby. I’ve got a good handle on the Championship and players coming through. Whether there’s a recruitment role or something further down the line, who knows? At some stage there will be an exit plan. But at the moment I am still enjoying it,” he said.
Looking back on his rugby life, the man from Llandaff North says: “I feel incredibly fortunate. I started off playing rugby out on the field of dreams, on Hailey Park, when I was a kid. Then watching the greats of the 1970s, that was hook line and sinker. I was done then.
“I massively enjoyed the amateur game. Cardiff was brilliant at the time, playing with your mates and having a good crack afterwards. I came in there on the back of a great era with some great players. Then you had the Alec Evans years which was a great period.
“It’s funny how things turn out. If I hadn’t broken my leg back in 1994, I wouldn’t be here having this conversation with you now. Joining Bedford as a player was about a little bit of security and that’s how it all began for me here. When the game turned professional, things changed. But I never made any memories from a pay packet. Even though I was being paid, it was nothing to do with that, it was all about the people and the guys you played with. I never rushed to the letter box to see my pay packet coming through. I only rushed when the kit van turned up!”
He concluded: “To have been here so long, I am still living it, that’s the thing. It’s difficult for me to say how proud I am at the moment. I will reflect when I have got a Sangria in my hand on the beach somewhere in years to come. That’s when I will look back and probably reflect with a lot more pride, I suppose.”
