COACHING in Super League is often the pinnacle for coaches in the northern hemisphere.
The lure of coaching in the top-flight can be the aim of many an up-and-coming.
And the same is true of Toulouse Olympique’s attacking coach and former Leeds Rhinos forward Eric Anselme, who was appointed in his current Toulouse role after a stint with Albi in Elite One and the French national team.
“I would love to coach in the UK, as a French guy I am passionate, I love this game and I have a lot to give in rugby league,” Anselme told League Express.
“However, my head is at Toulouse Olympique and fully focused on making the club achieve its goals. I am happy at this stage.
“But, rugby league in France is so restricted, to have the opportunity and put on the table on our skills in the UK, it would be exciting.
“When you are ambitious as a player and coach you want to have a great club and structure, to have a great crowd and ground, a great gym and a great conditioner around you.
“When you are stuck in France, the only thing you can do is try to develop yourself by yourself but players have to work too because they are amateur.
“You can’t attend training as a professional so your skills and conditioning declines and that’s why there is such a gap between professional players in the UK.
“We have really good young kids in France, like in England they are not fully professional yet.
“We are working with them on their skills but, after a certain age, English kids can get into a system where they train everyday with the best players and they’re paid.
“The young French kids were at the same level, but they have been left behind. They now have to go to work elsewhere and so don’t train as much and the system from there makes the French kids worse in terms of development. It is the same for coaching.”
Anselme has explained how he hasn’t had any coaching offers from the UK as of yet, but went on to describe his success in the Elite One division with Albi.
“I haven’t had any offers yet. I started as a coach at Albi for six years. We made some good strides over there, we built up an Albi team that is still battling for the play-offs nowadays.
“After that I went to the French team as head coach for the Under-19s. We made the Grand Final against England, we lost but that was pretty good after going through two seasons of Covid.
“The kids hadn’t played for two years, we had to build up a new team from scratch.”
