Patrick William Howard (born 14 November 1973) is an ex-head coach at

Leicester Tigers Leicester Tigers (officially Leicester Football Club) are a professional rugby union club based in Leicester, England. They play in Premiership Rugby, England's top division of rugby. The club was founded in 1880 and since 1892 plays its home ...

and a former Australian

rugby union Rugby union football, commonly known simply as rugby union in English-speaking countries and rugby 15/XV in non-English-speaking world, Anglophone Europe, or often just rugby, is a Contact sport#Terminology, close-contact team sport that orig ...

international who played

centre Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentricity ...

or fly-half. He was the General Manager, Team Performance – for the

Australia national cricket team The Australia men's national cricket team represents Australia in international cricket. Along with England, it is the joint oldest team in Test cricket history, playing and winning the first ever Test match in 1877; the team also plays One ...

. He was born in Sydney. His father Jake Howard played prop for

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

and his grandfather Cyril Towers also played centre for the Wallabies.

Early life

He attended

Marist College Ashgrove Marist College Ashgrove (abbreviated as MCA) is an Independent school, independent Roman Catholicism in Australia, Roman Catholic Day school, day and Boarding school, boarding primary school, primary and secondary school, secondary school for Sin ...

, Brisbane where he played 1st XV Rugby. He started his career playing for the

University of Queensland The University of Queensland is a Public university, public research university located primarily in Brisbane, the capital city of the Australian state of Queensland. Founded in 1909 by the Queensland parliament, UQ is one of the six sandstone ...

Football club. Studying pharmacy at the university he was a recipient of a University of Queensland Sporting Scholarship.

Playing & Coaching career

Howard started his career in the amateur era playing for the

Queensland Reds The Queensland Reds is the rugby union team based in Brisbane for the Australian state of Queensland that competes in the Southern Hemisphere's Super Rugby competition. Prior to 1996, they were a representative team selected from the rugby union ...

while at Queensland University, he made his international debut for

on 17 July 1993 against

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

at Carisbrook,

Dunedin Dunedin ( ; ) is the second-most populous city in the South Island of New Zealand (after Christchurch), and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from ("fort of Edin"), the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of S ...

. In 1996 Howard signed for the

ACT Brumbies The ACT Brumbies (known from 2005 to 2022 as simply the Brumbies) is an Australian professional rugby union team based in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory (ACT), The team competes in Super Rugby and named for the brumby, feral horses wh ...

in the inaugural Super 12 season. Howard made the last of his 20 test appearances on 22 November 1997 against

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

Murrayfield Murrayfield is an area to the west of Edinburgh city centre in Scotland. It is to the east of Corstorphine and north of Balgreen, Saughtonhall and Roseburn. The A8 road (Scotland), A8 road runs east–west through the south of the area. Murra ...

. In 1998 he signed for

, displacing

Will Greenwood William John Heaton Greenwood, Order of the British Empire, MBE (born 20 October 1972) is an English former rugby union player who played for Leicester Tigers and Harlequin F.C., Harlequins and was a member of England's 2003 Rugby World Cup, 20 ...

, who was forced to return to Harlequins for first team rugby. Howard became a pivotal part of the Tigers'

championship In sport, a championship is a competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion. Championship systems Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship. Title match system In this sys ...

winning side. Howard started the victorious 2001 Heineken Cup Final for Leicester. After the departure of

Joel Stransky Joel Theodore Stransky (born 16 July 1967) is a South African former rugby union player. A fly-half, he is known for scoring all of South Africa's points, including the winning drop goal, against New Zealand in the 1995 Rugby World Cup final ...

in 2000, he was appointed as the Tigers' backs coach, however he had his sights set on regaining a

Wallaby A wallaby () is a small or middle-sized Macropodidae, macropod native to Australia and New Guinea, with introduced populations in New Zealand, Hawaii, the United Kingdom and other countries. They belong to the same Taxonomy (biology), taxon ...

jersey ahead of the 2003 World Cup so rejoined the

Brumbies The ACT Brumbies (known from 2005 to 2022 as simply the Brumbies) is an Australian professional rugby union team based in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory (ACT), The team competes in Super Rugby and named for the feral horses which inh ...

in 2001, swapping his playing position with Rod Kafer. He was unable to make the squad for the World Cup and returned to Europe, playing for French side Montferrand for one season in 2003/04. After retiring as a player at the end of the season in 2004, Howard returned to Leicester Tigers, once again becoming backs coach. In 2005 he was appointed as head coach succeeding John Wells. He guided Tigers to the Guinness Premiership and

EDF Energy Cup The Anglo-Welsh Cup (), was a cross-border rugby union knock-out cup competition that featured the 12 Premiership Rugby clubs and the four Welsh regions. It was a created as a replacement for the RFU Knockout Cup, which featured only English clubs ...

finals in 2007, winning the domestic double. They also made the final of the

Heineken Cup The European Rugby Champions Cup (known as the Investec Champions Cup for sponsorship reasons) is an annual rugby union tournament organised by European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR). It is the top-tier competition for clubs who compete in a pre ...

but were denied an historic treble – succumbing to

Wasps A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. Th ...

25–9. On 28 December 2006, he announced he would resign as coach of the Tigers at the end of the 2006/7 season. Marcelo Loffreda was named Howard's successor, who took up his new role after the

2007 Rugby World Cup The 2007 Rugby World Cup () was the sixth Rugby World Cup, a quadrennial international rugby union competition organised by the International Rugby Board. Twenty nations competed for the Webb Ellis Cup in the tournament, which was hosted by F ...

Cricket management career

Howard returned to his native Australia to manage his family's pharmaceutical company, however quickly became general manager of the Australian Rugby Union's high performance unit. He also worked as Chief Operations Officer at Cromwell Property Group prior to his move to rugby management. On 13 October 2011, he was announced as the General Manager, Team Performance – for the Australian Cricket Team. This role, created to focus solely on team performance, was one of the key recommendations of the Don Argus led Australian Team Performance Review adopted by

Cricket Australia Cricket Australia (CA) is the governing body for professional and amateur cricket in Australia. It was originally formed in 1905 as the 'Australian Board of Control for International Cricket'. It is incorporated as an Australian Public Company ...

's Board in August. Howard has received some criticism for this role.

Shane Warne Shane Keith Warne (13 September 1969 – 4 March 2022) was an Australian international cricketer whose career ran from 1992 to 2007. Warne played as a right-arm leg spin bowler and a lower-order right-handed batter for Victoria, Hampshire ...

said in 2013,

should "please put current cricket people in charge to run the game, select teams, not ex rugby or any other sports people" and called Howard a " muppet". In March 2013, following being temporarily dropped from the national team Shane Watson said Howard had not been involved in cricket long enough to pass comment on his commitment to the Australian team.

References

External links

Sporting heroes

scrum.com statistics

Wallabies Profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Howard, Pat 1973 births Living people Rugby union players from Brisbane Australian rugby union players Leicester Tigers players Wanderers F.C. (rugby union) players Australian rugby union coaches ASM Clermont Auvergne players Australia international rugby union players Australian pharmacists University of Queensland alumni Leicester Tigers coaches Rugby union centres Rugby union fly-halves People educated at Marist College Ashgrove University of Queensland Rugby Club players Australian expatriate rugby union players in France Australian expatriate rugby union players in England ACT Brumbies players Expatriate rugby union coaches Queensland rugby union team players