The one thing you can say about the man is that no-one is indifferent about him – you either like Rob, or you don’t.  Even on this site, he has polarised opinion to the extent that you are in one of two camps; those who wanted to see the back of him, and those who wanted to let him carry on with the job in peace.

You have to say that the critics had got a point, especially regarding the league form.  Since the championship season of 1997-98, only three of the current top twelve have not featured in the top four positions in the league at the end of a season – Worcester, Bristol, and Falcons.  However, if you look at the trophy count over the same period, only four sides – Wasps, Leicester, Gloucester and Sale – have won more trophies in the same period.  Indeed, only Harlequins have won the same number – two – which means that six clubs have won less than Falcons.  It’s the age-old problem that whoever comes in will have to solve; turning the Falcons from a team that can beat anyone on their day, to a team that have more than half a dozen such days each season.

One thing that cannot be doubted is that he was the right man at the right time for Sir John Hall to take the game to a new level in the north east.  He had the profile – still winning England caps even from the second division – and that rarest of pleasures, a chance to build his own dream team.  No-one could believe that the team could win the title, especially in the first season (apart from Inga Tuigamala, of course), but the problem with signing any number of players over a short space of time is that you have to create a team with them - and that's where the test of a coach or DoR comes in. 

People forget that Falcons didn't win the second division title, Richmond did; it wasn't an automatic process in building a champion team, it took three years.  If the promotion system was as it is now, then Falcons would have played 1997/98 in the second division, and not won the Premiership - certainly not then, maybe not ever, given the loss of players in 1998/99 through either injury, age, or disenchantment.  The little bit of luck that the club had in occupying a second promotion place meant that the team-building process could go on - and we saw what happened.

As we all know, virtually as soon as the team had its greatest triumph, it broke up – and the club very nearly followed.  Rob himself admitted last year, “Winning the championship so early probably became a rod for our own backs as it raised the bar so much” and that “I think any club needs some stability, particularly a club like ours which has had to fight for everything.”  He’s provided that stability, particularly in the dark days of 1999 when there were just days left for the Falcons.  He started again, developed a new team through the youngsters, and as those youngsters grew up, he augmented them with quality overseas signings – Mark Mayerhofler, Mark Andrews, Matt Burke to name just three.

Very passionate about the game, and especially Falcons, that passion sometimes meant that he was the most quotable of the Premiership faces; having seen the process up close over the past two years editing this site I think that it’s fair to say that the seasoned journos are now looking for even the smallest line that they can use to try and hang him with.  That won’t change with him being in the England role.  What he can do though is use that passion to pull the national team up by its bootlaces.  Dewi Morris, his half back colleague for England over so many years, commented on the Rugby Club last season that he’d never him fitter, because he was working off his stresses in the gym.  That’s the man who was in charge of this club for eleven years; a man who cared deeply for it, and spent hours poring over his laptop watching games trying to find ways to improve it.

His greatest moment in charge of the club?  Even though he would (and did) say the 42-9 win over Toulouse in 2001/02, you have to point to that championship season and the two domestic cup victories as particularly high points.  Indeed, the victory over Sale remains one of the best games of rugby I’ve ever seen, aside from it being in a cup final situation, and belied a lot of the form shown by the squad during that season.  If you add on three European Challenge Cup semi finals and a Heineken Cup quarter final, cup competitions have not been the problem – and it’s back to the consistency question again.

The general consensus of opinion on this site is that we need to thank Rob Andrew for what he has done over the last eleven years, and wish him good luck in his new role, but that it’s also time for a change.  Now’s the time to get behind the man/men coming in.

One thing is for certain though.  Christopher Robert Andrew will always be a Falcons legend.

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