Hill keeps climbing the peaks in France

Jon Newcombe talks to top coach Richard Hill after he secured yet another promotion in the French leagues

- Jon Newcombe

FORMER Bath and England scrum-half Richard Hill must be in the running for the most upwardly mobile rugby coach award.

Another season over, another promotion achieved, Hill is a man who loves a trophy in his hand every bit as much as a glass of red with Club Athlétique Périgueux the latest club to move up a league on his watch.

To everyone bar the club president, Hill was the toast of the otherwise sleepy town after a gruelling 27-match campaign in Nationale 2 ended with a 39-20 victory over CS Vienne Rugby in the playoff final.

A couple of days later, Hill and his team were subjects of a Mayoral address in front of hordes of supporters who’d gathered in the square of the 12th century Santiago de Compostela cathedral. His eighth promotion, on both sides of the channel, was a little different to the circumstances around his first.

Having drawn a blank at the start of his career at Harlequins, Gloucester and Newport, Hill and his assistant Martin Haag got Bristol back up from the old National One division and into the Premiership two years into their three-year plan. Promotion was confirmed the night before their final trip of the season, to Otley.

“We’d had a big argument with the Otley people,” he recalls. Bristol had brought up a huge amount of support, which obviously helped the coffers of Otley but they wouldn’t let the non-playing members of the squad in without paying, which they weren’t very happy about so I paid for them myself.”

Back in those days, there was next to no TV coverage, no shiny silverware, just the wooden shield that was given to all league winners below the Premiership to hold aloft. Hill argues not much has changed at that level of English rugby, and at least then promotion was all-but-guaranteed for the winners.