Neil Back resigned as coach of Leeds on Tuesday

May 11, 2011

Former World Cup-winning flanker Neil Back resigned as coach of Leeds on Tuesday after the club finished bottom of the English Premiership.

Neil Back quit as head coach of Leeds Carnegie after the team finished last in English rugby union’s Premiership.

Back, a former England and British & Irish Lions flanker, resigned with “immediate effect,” Leeds said today in a statement on its website. A final-day defeat at Northampton on May 7 left Leeds bottom of the 12-team Premiership standings on points difference.

“I feel I have taken Leeds as far as I can,” Back, 42, said in the statement.

Leeds’s relegation fate won’t be confirmed until May 18 following the completion of a two-game promotion playoff between Worcester and Cornish Pirates. Should the Pirates win, Leeds would retain its Premiership status because Worcester is the only one of the two teams that meets the elite league’s entry criteria.