David ELLIS

Biog of David ELLIS :

He is the longest serving member of the French team’s staff. The moustachioed David Ellis arrived in October 2000, and since then the Englishman, with the look of a lost German tourist - crew cut, nascent beer belly, wearing shorts in just about all weathers - has been dispensing his know-how to the Tricolores defence, equally at ease with the pragmatism “à la Laporte” that made his name, as with the total rugby game of the Lièvremont era. The former rugby league player is vital to the team.

His principles are simple: “Defensive organisation,” he says, “must first be drawn up collectively; afterwards I adapt it according to each player’s qualities.” He then adds, “Good defensive organisation, without individual technique and without discipline, isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.” He thinks of everything: the placement of the head or the feet, how to come up on the ball carrier, the drive at the moment of contact, position, communication, repositioning. These are all the basics today but were revolutionary ten years ago when, coming out of nowhere - or so it seemed - he started working with les Bleus. Bernard Laporte, the selector who had taken up the post less than a year before, had heard the word on the grapevine. Ellis had been coaching at Bègles-Bordeaux since 1999, his second French rugby union club after Racing (1998-1999), where he worked after being introduced by Jacques Fouroux, the two having met at PSG XIII (rugby league).

David Ellis’ CV is as long as his arm. “I was less talented than my two brothers and destined for the coal mine like my uncles,” he recalls. “I wasn’t as good as them at rugby (league), but more physical. One day my father said to me, “You have got less talent than your brothers but you have got something that they haven’t got - the way you tackle.””  Ellis, who, from five years of age honed his tackling on chairs spread about his father’s garden, worked 250m below ground in a mine in Castleford (and then Selby) in the North of England for 10 years (1974-1984), playing rugby for his hometown club in his spare time. From 16 years of age onwards he was sought after by the biggest clubs (Wakefield, Leeds) but refused to sign, his roots meaning more to him than money. Then the 1984-85 Miner’s Strike against Thatcher’s policy of pit closure changed everything: a year without pay and the banks knocking at his door. Despite his 25 England rugby league caps, Ellis, broke, ended up by flying off to Australia with his wife and two daughters. There he became known as the “Little Terminator”, only 84 kilos but crunching tackles on command. He cut sugar cane in the morning, cut opponents or teammates in half in the afternoon, passed his first coaching badge and played for Townsville, Toowoomba and then Brisbane. He stayed in the Antipodes for four years before returning to England (for a season as player/coach at Batley) and then crossed the Channel to train the Bataillon de Joinville (army) rugby league side whilst playing for Corbeil (1992-93) at the same time. Next he led Villeneuve-sur-Lot to three French Championship finals (1996-98, victory in 1996) while helping out Fouroux at PSG XIII, who were competing in the Super League (1996), before returning to England once more to pass more coaching badges and to coach rugby union for the first time in the second division (Harrogate). He then crossed back over the Channel to land up at the Racing Club de France. Phew! A packed few years! So many ports of call. But always with the deep-seated conviction that was as valid for the coach he had become as for the player he was: “If you are a good tackler, you can play in any team you like.”

Ellis, like other converts from rugby league, brought “the concept of aggressive defence” to French rugby union. "In rugby league,” he explains, “each time the ball comes back into play, the defence has to be 10 metres back, the defender has only one way of stopping the attack and that is to sprint and hit the ball-carrier as early and as hard as possible and to knock him backwards.” He provided Laporte’s side with a defensive rigour never until then seen in a French team, with as crowning achievement two defensive masterpieces that he is particularly proud of: France/England 2002 (the famous Betsen-Wilkinson encounter) and New Zealand/France in the quarter-final of the 2007 World Cup. As well as coaching the French team (with whom he only signed his first contract in 2001), Ellis also works at club level, plying his trade on both sides of the Channel indiscriminately: Gloucester (2001-2005), Castres (2005-2008), Brive (2008-2009) and London Irish (since 2009).

In 2008, France’s new coaching trio (Lièvremont, Ntamack, Retière) kept Ellis on (Ellis had worked with the latter two when they were in charge of France Under 21s), despite their priorities being diametrically opposed (at first at least) to those of the last incumbents. And the defence proved to be one of the cornerstones of France’s ninth Grand Slam in 2010.

Ellis has a custom of giving out awards to the best defenders after each match: the 100% for the player who did not miss a tackle, the best (for the largest number of tackles), the destroyer (the hardest hit), and the grass-cutter for the player who tackled the lowest.