It’s fair to say that when Paul Stickler took over as head coach at Cheltenham Civil Service at the start of the season, it was seen by some as the start of a new era at the club.

The club had endured a number of tough seasons with the flagship team being on the wrong end of some difficult defeats.

Not this season though. The club have been on an upward curve from the moment the Gloucestershire Two North season kicked off and as the campaign draws towards an exciting climax they are very much in the hunt for promotion to Gloucestershire One.

“When I came here I had no pre-conceived ideas,” said the 55-year-old Stickler. “I wasn’t concerned about where players had played in the past, I put players in the positions which I thought was best for the club.

“Whatever had happened before clearly hadn’t worked. They’d had two years of struggling to win anything so I started from scratch, I was a fresh pair of eyes.”

There was more to it than that of course because he also had a strategy.

“I set up a basic gameplan,” Stickler continued. “This is not a 12-month project, it’s a long journey.”

So what does the gameplan involve?

“The gameplan is for the forwards to create space so that the ball can go wide,” explained Stickler. “But we don’t just fling the ball out quickly, we earn the right to go wide.”

It’s a gameplan that the players have had to buy into – the club’s training techniques have also been changed – but the results show clearly that it is something that they have embraced.

And as every good coach will say, they are only as good as their players.

“Players should only do what they know they are good at,” said Stickler. “They need to know what their personal limitations are, that’s something we’re really driving into the players. We still encourage them to make individual decisions but within their own skill-set.”

Fitness is a big part of what Stickler is all about as well.

“Yes, we’ve worked very hard on it,” he said. “At most amateur levels of rugby, the fitter you are then the more likely you are to win games in the final 25 or 30 minutes even if you are not quite as good as the other team.

“At the moment we’re doing really well.”

When Stickler spoke to The Local Answer the race for the Gloucestershire Two North title was a four-way battle between Service, Fairford, Tewkesbury and Painswick, but while promotion would obviously be welcomed by Service’s supporters, Stickler believes there is a much bigger picture.

For him it’s all about performance and he has reasoned, quite rightly, that if the performances are good enough, then promotion will almost certainly follow.

It’s a philosophy that he has developed over many years in rugby, years that have seen him play, coach and also referee.

He was a full-back or fly-half back in the day and was good enough to play at Bath United in the early 80s when household names like Gareth Chilcott, Jeremy Guscott, Richard Hill, Simon Halliday and Stuart Barnes were starting to strut their stuff.

“I got told I was too small to play at the top level,” he said. “I’m 5ft 10in and they said they wanted 6ft players. Then the club signed Stuart Barnes from Bristol! Mind you, he was an exceptional talent and I wasn’t!”

A combination of injury and his job commitments – Stickler worked in the prison service – meant he stopped playing rugby at the age of 24 but although he had spells out of the game he wasn’t lost to the sport for good.

He took up refereeing before returning as a coach, firstly as assistant to Andy Wadley at Brockworth after he’d moved to this area, and then as head coach at Cainscross, whom he helped gain promotion.

So how far does he think Cheltenham Civil Service can go?

“I want to get them back to playing at a decent level, a level I think they should be playing at,” Stickler said. “But I’m not going to say they should be playing in Gloucestershire Premier in two seasons because if they don’t the players will feel that they’ve failed.

“They are playing below the level they should be but it’s not about how far they can go, it’s about performance. If they put in the performances then the results will follow.

“At the moment everything is working, but if they don’t develop individually and collectively they won’t push on.”

All the signs are that the club are pushing on and although it would be easy to say that’s it all down to Stickler, he insists that is not the case.

Along with his assistant OJ Wood, he may have changed gameplans and training techniques but says that without the support of the players and everyone at the club he wouldn’t have been able to bring about the upturn in fortunes.

That he has is good for the club and good for rugby in the area because back in the day the Service used to regularly field four adult teams on a Saturday afternoon.

Those days have long gone of course but Stickler knows the importance of the flagship team doing well.

“If the first-team is successful it gives everyone a lift,” he said.

“We’ve brought in a few new players in key positions and that has assisted in the improvement that has been made.

“The players are buzzing and there’s a good atmosphere around the clubhouse.
“We’ve also got a successful ladies’ team – they’re buzzing as well – and we’ve got a junior section that is really starting to kick off on Sunday mornings.”

And the facilities are pretty good at the club’s Tewkesbury Road ground as well.

“We’ve got without doubt one of the best pitches in Gloucestershire,” said Stickler. “The pitch is immaculate, other clubs would love one like it.”

On and off the pitch, it certainly seems that Cheltenham Civil Service Rugby Club are heading in the right direction.