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Greenwood ready to hit the ground running

Dewsbury Rams announced Lee Greenwood as the club’s new head coach at the recent fans forum.

Greenwood who is the former boss of Gloucestershire All Golds explained his excitement at being unveiled as the new Rams head coach.

He exclusively spoke to the Rams website.

On joining the club he said: “Obviously I wasn’t expecting to get the job. There were a good amount of candidates.

“I know there were a lot of people who applied for the job. Dewsbury is a good club so there was a lot of interest in the position.

“I speak honestly in the changing rooms and in interviews, I did that when I spoke to the board. Obviously they heard some of the stuff I was saying and liked it.

“I feel like I have done the hard yards, coaching at Siddal for a few years whilst playing. Then going to an assistant role, and then I got a head coach job in League One with Gloucestershire. I feel like I have done my own kind of apprenticeship. So I am ready for the next step up and this is where it is.

“Everywhere you go it is a challenge, whether you are a club down at the bottom fighting against relegation or a team at the top with a big budget going for promotion. This division has its own challenges as does every league. We at this club are no different, we aren’t going to set ourselves a league position to then fail. We’ll just see what happens and work as hard as we can.”

Greenwood briefly spoke about former head coach Neil Kelly praising the job he had done at the club.

He said: “I have a lot of respect for Neil and the job he did here and how he turned things around since he came in. I also thought Glenn (Morrison) did a really good job before Neil came to the club. From what I have seen former Dewsbury head coaches have done a good job and have been backed by the board.

“That was the other thing that attracted me to the job. It seems like you get a good chance here even if things aren’t going right. So you get a chance to turn it around. Hopefully for me it’ll be all plain sailing but I know it won’t be.”

Greenwood is excited to stamp his own ideas on to the club and will be looking to do that as soon as possible.

He added: “I like what the board said to me, in that the head coach is the main man here. It can work for you or against you that. Obviously if it isn’t going well you have to take all the rubbish. If it is going well then you can take all the credit, but I am not like that anyway.

“It is good I can make a lot of the key decisions and shape things how I like. Whether you can do that in the first 12 month I am not sure, but we’ll try to get some things across.

“There will be some things that change across the year that people will see. Obviously with the timings of things the club needed to get people signed up. So the club has got the majority of its squad for next year and I am happy to work with these players not a problem. Now I will look to bring my own people in.

“Obviously over time people will see changes. Some people may want to leave, they might not like how I talk and so want to move on which is fine. I dare say that whenever a new coach comes in there are some adaptations that need to be made, and it could be a couple of years before you see those adaptations working and coming to the table.”

The new Rams boss, spoke about his time in Gloucestershire and explained about some of the difficulties he had at the club.

He commented: “I will be given a lot more help and support here. There were some long and lonely drives down to Gloucester. You would have players texting you that they could not make it to training. You would have lads that you thought had signed from another club to then find out they had signed for someone up north. There was a hell of a lot of let downs, an example is having players sent to you on loan and then turning up to find they had gone somewhere else.

“You name it we went through it down there, and I take my hat off to coaches of all southern clubs. I know how difficult it is, tough, tough jobs they are, probably the toughest in pro-rugby league.

“You are stuck on an outpost, no players on your doorstep, no money, it is difficult. To get a competitive team on the field most weeks was hard but we did it most weeks and got some good results.

“Coming to this club is a different challenge, we are in a hot bed of rugby league. We have got access to players, whether they are experienced or young players. They can come from Super League, Championship, League 1 and below, so the players are there.

“There should not be a reason why we can not field a full team.”

Lastly Greenwood had a message for the fans.

“I did not know what to expect when driving over tonight. However it has been good and the fans seem welcoming.

“A lot have come over to wish me good luck which was nice. Everyone by the end had a smile on their face.

“Everyone seems to be looking forward to it, the season has only just finished really. So it is good that they are excited already to see what is going to happen, four of five months ahead before we get cracking with games.

“I am really happy with the welcome I have got and hopefully they will be just as happy once we have played a few games.”