Professor who did it tough

story about how, as a student at teaching college following a long drive south from Waikato, he arrived to try out for the Christchurch club only to discover 97 players had turned up for the trial. “I didn’t even bother getting my boots out of the car,” he says.

He played among the freezing workers at the humble Belfast club instead — his influence was made clear when that was the club of choice for Sonny Bill Williams when he arrived from France to play for Canterbury and the Crusaders — and Smith quickly fitted in. He even found an unlikely ally in famous Canterbury and All Blacks prop Bill Bush.

Smith has the ability to relate to people and that, and his groundbreaking work on the mental side of the game, will mark him out as a special coach. The man who wrote the dissertation Why the Puritans of America Lost their Zealousness while at Waikato University has always had the common touch.

He was a key force behind turning the Crusaders from competition wooden-spooners in 1996 to champions in 1998 and that was due mainly to his work on the mentality of winning, of effectively turning a team into a “cult”.

“It was pretty revolutionary in those days and it was successful,” he says. “I still remember a game — we were unbeaten at Canterbury B and we were playing Graham Henry’s unbeaten Auckland B who were pretty sharp as you can imagine.”

His co-coach at the time was one Steve Hansen who during the match drilled into his team “next task, next task”. “We won that game 63-0 or something which was plenty in those days,” Smith says.

His relative failure as All Blacks head coach in 2000-2002 will come as no surprise to followers of New Zealand rugby, but his recollections of that time are honest and affecting — like the time he and Anton Oliver, the All Blacks captain of the time, went out to a suburban pub in Christchurch to get over a loss to Australia.

In 2004, Smith was convinced to return from Northampton to be Henry’s assistant at the All Blacks, an extraordinary run which involved the devastating World Cup quarterfinal loss of 2007 and epic wins at the 2011 and 2015 tournaments.

Smith was involved in 103 games with the All Blacks on his return, a tally which included 89 wins. He left with his reputation as a coach enhanced, and has a final warning for those running the modern game.

“We’ve got to be careful with the overloading of players. They play an incredibly high-powered, highintensity, collision-based game.”

Wayne Smith: For the Love of the Game 1.