Steve will be head coach and have a mentoring role for the new assistant coaches Karl Frish (Forwards and West coast) and Shelton Davies (East Coast and Backs). Their roles will be hands on in Norway in areas such as talent scouting, basic skill implementation, Fitness and Strength and conditioning implimintation. He is due to take up the position after the Swedish game.

Kristina Ruffles will stay on as team manager organising the logistics of operating the XV and facilitating the coaches needs.

Their primary goal is to stay in our current ENC Division

About Steve Bates

Steve Bates (born 4 March 1963 in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales) is a former English rugby union player and current rugby coach. He played at scrum-half for London Wasps, where he formed a successful partnership with fly-half Rob Andrew. He was capped once for England, against Romania in Bucharest in 1989, and toured South Africa with England in 1994.

In 1995, when Andrew left Wasps to become Director of Rugby at Newcastle Falcons, Bates followed him, becoming the Falcons' head coach. Under Bates, Newcastle were promoted to the Premiership at the end of the 1996–97 season and went on to top the league at the first attempt, in 1997–98; they reached the final of the Tetley's Bitter Cup in 1999 and won the trophy (by then known as the Powergen Cup in 2001. Bates left Newcastle in March 2003 and, a year later, was appointed as head coach of Border Reivers, taking over from New Zealander Tony Gilbert, who was returning home.

Bates successfully guided Borders back into the Heineken Cup in 2006–07 and, during his time with the club, also coached Scotland A to the final of the 2006 Churchill Cup, which they lost to the New Zealand Maori, after wins against England Saxons and Canada.

When the Scottish Rugby Football Union announced that Border Reivers was to be disbanded at the end of the 2006–07 season, Bates was headhunted by Newcastle Falcons to become their Coaching and Technical Director and rejoined the club in June 2007.

In January 2008, the Rugby Football Union announced the appointment of Bates as head coach of England Saxons on a part-time basis.During his days as a player, in the amateur era, Bates was a schoolteacher at Lord Wandsworth College in Hampshire, where one of his pupils was the young Jonny Wilkinson and he was instrumental in attracting the fly-half to Newcastle in the summer of 1997.