Goulding pleased to be putting buzz back
into Hornets
By Christopher Irvine

BOBBIE GOULDING’S firebrand reputation was inevitably raised
when he met supporters of Rochdale Hornets, where rugby league’s
arch poacher has turned gamekeeper as player-coach — the
equivalent, some would say, of making Paul Gascoigne a manager.
“Hopefully, by the summer, the media talk will be about positive
aspects of the team, not my past,” Goulding told his audience at
Spotland this week.

The past does not fade easily in his case, simply
because there is so much of it — Rochdale is
Goulding’s ninth club since he signed as a 16-year-old
for Wigan — yet for all the bust-ups along the way, the
enthusiasm that has never deserted him has rarely
shone as brightly on the eve of a new season. The old
joke about Goulding is that he has turned over more
leaves than an autumn gale, but in little more than six
weeks the sport’ s one-time enfant terrible has raised
a team from the ashes left by a financial meltdown at
Rochdale and confounded those who warned Ray
Taylor, the Hornets chairman, to “run a mile” from
him.

So far, it has proved an inspired move. Goulding, 31,
has pulled in favours and wheeler-dealed to produce a
squad of 20 players and his sparky presence has
revitalised the whole club. All, incredibly, on a
voluntary basis. “I’ll sit down with the chairman when
the time is right,” he said. “Money’s not the priority
now. I’m doing something I love after 12 months out
of the game.”

Before his last game, in the 2002 National League One
Grand Final for Leigh Centurions, Goulding had been
suffering regular blackouts — the cumulative effect of
15 years of hard knocks in an unforgiving sport. He
took time out to rest and be with his family, but got an
insight coaching Widnes St Maries, his old amateur
club.

Goulding stepped in last month at Rochdale when a
consortium led by Martin Hall, their former coach,
failed to take over the troubled club. Despite a
third-place finish in National League One last year,
there was not one player signed on for the new season.

“We’d four turn up for training the first night. To say
we have come out of the darkness is an
understatement,” Goulding, who has turned to some
proven hands in Darren Shaw, Lee Hansen, Andy
Leathem and Paul Anderson, said. “It’s a question
now of getting them to gel as a unit.”

A question also of discipline, for which Goulding was
hardly renowned. “You discipline them if they miss
training, say. I’ve heard some excuses, made up a few
myself, but the ones I’ve heard the last couple of
weeks have been proper whoppers. But they’re good
lads, really,” he said.

The Arriva Trains Cup and a visit to Hunslet Hawks
tomorrow will form part of the bedding-in procedure
before the league campaign begins in April. Doubters
wonder whether Goulding will last that long.
Rochdale’s survival in the division below Super
League is the main priority and Goulding’s long-term
coaching ambition is fixed on reaching the top.

“I scaled the heights as a player and I feel I’ve
everything in my kit bag to do the same as a coach,”
he said. “I’ve had some excellent teachers — Malcolm
Reilly, Doug Laughton, John Monie, Phil Larder,
Shaun McRae, Eric Hughes. If I can take a little from
each of those and add in my own stuff, I can’t see me
going wrong.”