Greenwood relishing challenge after taking over as Rams coach

Greenwood beat off competition from 41 other candidates and was unveiled as the successor to Neil Kelly at the club’s Fans Forum last Friday.

The 38 year-old former England international has served a good apprenticeship, serving as assistant coach at Batley Bulldogs and home-town club Halifax before taking over as head coach at Gloucestershire All Golds in 2014.

Greenwood has also enjoyed a successful period coaching highly rated amateur side Siddal and is now looking forward to taking charge at the Rams.

Greenwood said: “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.”

Greenwood admitted that his time in charge at Gloucester was, sometimes, difficult, with the long distance travelling and recruiting players from outside the traditional rugby league heartland.

He added: “I will be given a lot more help and support here (at Dewsbury). 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 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 One and below, so the players are there.”