Farewell to Smithy, a Kiwi rugby genius and a gent
No one has helped the All Blacks to raise the bar more than the brilliant Wayne Smith.
The greatest thing about Wayne Smith is that in the 60-year-old coaching guru he’s become, you can still see so much of the bright eyed, enthusiastic 22-year-old who drove down to Christchurch from Putaruru in a clunking old Valiant in 1979, a kid so electric on the field that within a year he was an All Black.
Smith’s coaching career with the All Blacks, which ended last night in Brisbane, is the most extraordinary in the history of the game. Universally recognised as one of the greatest thinkers in world rugby, he’s been there for the best times, World Cup titles in 2011 and 2015, and the darkest, a semi-final loss in 1999, and the horror quarter-final defeat in 2007.
Through it all there have been constants. His love for rugby always being matched by his love for the All Blacks. His refusal to yield to cynicism. A constant search for new and better ways to play the game. The pleasure he takes in innovation.
Asked last year how different the game is, compared to when he began as an All Black in 1980, he said, ‘‘It’s almost impossible to make a comparison, the game now is so advanced, and so fast and skilled. It’s like trying to compare Neil Armstrong going to the moon with the space probe travelling 540 million miles to Jupiter.’’
It’s no accident that in 2003 Graham Henry was so keen to have Smith join him in an All Black coaching lineup. Or that this year Smith wasn’t really joking when he said every time he tried to talk to Steve Hansen about quitting the All Blacks, Hansen would change the subject.
Smith’s always been ahead of the curve. Seventeen years ago, when video analysis was regarded in some circles as one step removed from voodoo I noted in a magazine story that ‘‘the computer that allows him to analyse players game by game, frame by frame, still dominates his desk.’’
It’s been well recorded that when he returned to the All Black coaching frame in 2004 he triggered the decision to lay down team guidelines that, among other things, excluded binge drinking from being an official part of the team culture.
He’s always been unafraid to think out of the square when it came to man management.
As coach of the ‘98 title winning Crusaders he dealt with his most laidback player Norm Berryman getting tense before games, by encouraging him to become every more laidback, to the point where Berryman and another very relaxed man, Andrew Mehrtens, would prowl the fences at Lancaster Park before games, swapping handshakes and jokes with fans.
And in Smith’s case thoughtfulness should not be confused with weakness of character. As a 71kg first-five in 17 tests he never lacked for courage.
‘‘I admired him for his tackling,’’ said his Canterbury captain Don Hayes. ‘‘He never dodged a tackle, though I doubt he ever knocked the eyebrow off a gnat with one.’’
Off the field he wasn’t scared to make painful decisions either. As All Black head coach in 2000 he decided he had to drop his captain, Todd Blackadder. He didn’t take the easy option of a phone call.
Smith and his assistant Tony Gilbert drove to the Blackadder home in Rangiora, outside Christchurch. ’’All I could focus on was getting the process right, and being up front with him,’’ Smith told me a year later. ‘‘We hopped out of the car, and I just blurted it out. I thought, ‘There’s no use beating about the bush.’ I said, ‘Look Toddy, it’s not good news.’ I thought that was the best way, and then, if he wanted to kick us off the property, so be it. Then he tried to make us feel good about it.’’
When you consider Smith’s first experiences with All Black coaching New Zealand should be grateful he had the mental strength to step back into the fold.
He was an assistant to John Hart in the grim years of 1998 (five test losses in a row), and ‘99, when world cup hopes were shattered by the French at Twickenham.
After two seasons as head coach from 2000, with a respectable 66 per cent win/loss ratio, Smith faced an NZRU panel and told them he was not sure if he wanted to continue as All Black coach.
To this day I can remember clearly the bewilderment in DAVID NEILSON/PHOTOSPORT Smith’s voice when, after the NZRU misconstrued his ‘‘I’m not sure’’ as ‘‘I don’t want the job’’ and sacked him, he told me, ‘‘I thought they wanted me to be honest.’’
He and his family then moved to England where he successfully coached Northampton.
The Smiths were entirely happy there, so it was a huge wrench to come back to New Zealand and work with Graham Henry and Steve Hansen with the All Blacks. (Henry’s first phone call from New Zealand in December, 2003, was conducted with Trish Smith mouthing ‘‘NO! NO!’’ more and more urgently to her husband as Henry asked him to return home.)
Ultimately the return, with record breaking back to back World Cup wins, would be triumphant beyond anyone’s dreams, and it’s a reflection of Smith’s collegial attitude that he’s worked in tandem this year with his replacement, Scott McLeod, to smooth the transition.
Back in 2000 Smith said he believed the challenge in New Zealand ‘‘is for all of us to go forward and to raise the bar for the other countries, rather than chase them.’’
Nearly two decades on nobody’s helped raise that bar more than him.