Black & Ambers benefit from Ty break

Afterall, what number two doesn’t want to step up and put his own imprint on a team? Unfortunately things didn’t pan out as envisaged when his first season in charge of the Black & Ambers ended abruptly thanks to covid-19.

“I’ve been head coach nearly two years now, unfortunately about 18 months of being head coach doing nothing,” laments Morris.

Like everyone else though, he kept himself busy during lockdown, even though the gloss eventually wore off the online weekly quizzes and monthly parties via zoom.

“I don’t think we realised how long it was going to go on for if I’m completely honest,” says Newport’s head coach, before adding: “I think I podcasted myself out in the first four or five months – there wasn’t many I didn’t sign up to, to be honest.”

While players across the land converted garages into makeshift gyms to stay motivated, Morris went down another route and went online to ‘upskill’ himself by joining various rugby memberships and alongside assistant coaches Stuart Lawrence and James Dixon came up with a novel way of keeping the ol’ grey matter ticking over.

“We had a little bit of a of a coaching brief together where we tried to analyse teams like Wales as a coaching group just to keep our hand in. I would do the forwards, Jamie did the backs and Stu did the defence,” he says.

When this year’s pre-season eventually materialised, Morris admits it was an intriguing return to action.

“It was exciting, it was nice but I was a little bit nervous and there was a little bit of anxiety I suppose around how we are going to plan to get them back fit. It’s been a long time off and we’re hoping as coaches that they would have stayed on top of things but the multi-directional stuff they just didn’t have that in them,” he recalls.

“The biggest worry I suppose was the contact and making sure that they were able to come back to that 4-5 week block we had before we could transition them into any contact.

“This pre-season has obviously been like no other. The standard pre-season you have two or three weeks off and you’re almost straight back into it – it doesn’t really feel that you have any time off.

“We had a lot of new recruits in so part of our pre-season was making sure we could have good connections as a group, make sure that everyone buys into that rugby family values ethos that we strive for at Newport.”

Newport started their pre-season with a narrow defeat to Pontypridd and an encouraging win against Swansea University and travel to Aberavon tomorrow in their penultimate tune-up before beginning their Indigo Group Premiership Cup campaign against Pontypridd on September 18.

With the WRU catching many on the hop last week when announcing The Indigo Group Premiership will start on 11 December, Morris admits to having to reassess the season’s objectives.

“Originally we sat down as a coaching team, we thought we could use the East Premiership Cup to build up momentum ready for the league. We’ve spoken since and the players think they’re ready, we really want to perform and we want to try and make the play-offs if we’re honest. The more games that we can get in the better so we’re hoping for a successful run in the cup and hopefully in the league,” he says.

Last month Morris bolstered his backroom team by appointing former Dragons and Cardiff Blues prop Sam Hobbs as assistant forwards coach and according to Morris, his impact was instant.

“The attention to detail he has brought in…. I only sat with him for about an hour and just thought wow,” explains Morris.

“I was just sponging off him rather than him sponging off me. Instantly I thought being head coach and forwards coach I was sharing myself a little bit too much and not giving enough detail. Bringing Sam in was a definite for us straight away and we’ve benefited already within a short space of time.”

As a coach himself, Morris says he can be quite serious at times and even though he’s a stickler for driving high standard across the board, ‘screaming and shouting isn’t my cup of tea’.

Since winning the inaugural Welsh Premiership in 2003/04, success has been hard to come by since for Newport, but Morris is still optimistic the Black & Ambers can make an impression this season.

“At the moment the way I see the Premiership is I genuinely feel that it should be used as a tool to develop the younger next generation of professionals into the regions. I think the more we can develop the youngsters in our league the better – that’s my personal opinion.

“As a club we’re always just striving to be the best we can and it’s all about performance for us. If we can play an exciting brand of rugby that the supporters want to come and watch then that puts smiles on our faces – it would be nice to win the league every year mind.”

True to his word, Wales Under 20 graduates Deon Smith, Will Reed and Will Griffiths all form part of Morris’s plans for the forthcoming season. Highly rated Griffiths was jettisoned from the Dragons programme last year but Morris is confident playing for Newport will give the hooker plenty of opportunities to prove the doubters wrong.

“He had one game with us just before covid when he was with the Dragons Academy – and within that one session you could see he had some special skills,” says Morris.

“As a footballer he is absolutely outstanding. Some might say size may go against him but there’s been plenty of professionals in and around his size and he offers much, much more qualities than others I see.

“Fingers crossed the Premiership opens up different doors for him – he may not necessarily stay in Wales as a professional player – he may move onto another club to meet his goals.”

Griffiths, along with Reed and Smith are ‘local’ lads who have committed themselves to the Black & Ambers and that is a huge factor for Morris.

“That was one of my big drives when I came in, even under Craig [Warlow] our goal was to try and recruit more locally.

“We’ve got a lot of Newport boys in and around the area and it does mean a lot for them to play for Newport and put that jersey on – for them to know as a kid growing up who wore that jersey and all the special players who have gone before them. It means a lot to get those local players playing week in week out for Newport.

“We’ve recruited a lot, actually more than anticipated I suppose. We definitely need a big squad for this year that’s for sure but specifically behind the scrum we’ve brought in quality players like Matt Powell from Cardiff who is a prolific finisher, Cameron Lewis (Wales 7s), and Deon Smith, so it’s been all about integrating them into an exciting backline,” adds Morris.

The squad are concentrating on producing positive performances although Morris concedes: “Obviously our ambition is to go top four in the league and make the play-offs in the cup.

“We’ve recruited well enough to be able to do that I believe but as I’ve already found with COVID starting to rise and the contacts pinging, I’ve got 4-5 people out now because they made contact with covid.

“I don’t think I have put the same squad together yet in two or three games so it’s going to be really challenging to give an end goal to say where we are going to be because I genuinely feel that it’s going to be a lot of stop-start straight up until the New Year anyway.”

Once the Indigo Premiership Cup is concluded the league will be front and centre of minds and with no promotion-relegation involved this season, Morris believes there is no excuse for teams not to play attractive free-flowing rugby for the fans.

“I think it’s three or four years ago when we didn’t have promotion relegation and there was a hell of a lot of pressure off us.

“Our mindset going into almost every game was to go out and score five tries and I think from last season – the season before – there were games, you thought right sometimes we might not have to play with the ball with the conditions and things like that but I do believe there should be promotion relegation as  it does put pressure on teams.

Morris is approaching the season ahead cautiously as he is fully aware things can change in an instant; he only has to go back to his first season in charge to appreciate that.

“We started well, we beat Ebbw Vale then we had three losses and then we had a run of games of four or  five successful wins. We felt like going into that January we had got a bit of momentum behind us but as things went that was the end of it.”