Landing his dream job cost Blair a round to savour!
‘I’D MISSED TWO CALLS FROM MARK DODSON... I WAS THINKING: “WHAT HAVE HR FOUND OUT ABOUT ME”!’
WHEN an unfamiliar number flashed up on Mike Blair’s phone recently he took the decision not to answer it. Twice. Midway through a game of golf at the Glen course in North Berwick, the former Scotland scrum-half was intrigued but not enough to ‘disrupt the flow’ of one of the rounds of his life.
When a message later followed revealing the caller to have been Mark Dodson, Scottish Rugby CEO, requesting a meeting, Blair’s curiosity was accompanied by a sinking feeling of dread. What had he possibly done wrong? His hitherto stellar round of golf duly went south.
With more than two years left on his contract as one of Gregor Townsend’s Scotland assistant coaches, the 40-year-old felt he was in a good place heading towards the 2023 World Cup.
Richard Cockerill had just vacated the head coach’s office at Edinburgh but Blair wasn’t convinced this was why Dodson was calling. After all, he had yet to be a No 1 in his own right barring a temporary, Covid-ruined spell in charge of Scotland this summer when Townsend was away on British and Irish Lions duty.
There is only so long you can ignore the big boss, however, and soon a meeting with Dodson was set up. And, to Blair’s surprise, it was good news after all. Did he want to be the new Edinburgh head coach? It was a fairly straightforward decision for this son of the capital.
‘It’s an interesting one as the whole thing came pretty quickly on me,’ the former Glasgow Warriors coach revealed as he settles into the post with pre-season well underway.
‘It wasn’t something that I had thought about. I tend not to plan too heavily for myself. And the job that I’m in now (as a head coach) is kind of out of your control in a way. It’s done on opinions and how players perform. I don’t think you can plan too far ahead so I wasn’t doing that.
‘I had two-and-a-half years left on my Scotland contract up until the end of the World Cup. So even when Cockers left, I wasn’t thinking: “There we go, I’m in”.
‘But then I got a message from Mark asking if we could meet up. I’d had two missed calls from him and I didn’t have his number stored in my phone at the time.
‘I was one-under after 10 holes at the Glen in North Berwick so I didn’t pick up these calls as I thought it would ruin my flow! ‘Then I got a message asking if we could meet that afternoon. And I dropped six shots in three holes.
‘Your head naturally goes towards the negative. What have HR found out about me?! But fortunately it was positive.
‘I did wonder if he might be asking me about Edinburgh but I hadn’t thought too much about it as I was expecting to be with Scotland at least until the World Cup.
‘But as soon as we started talking about it, I got quite excited by it all. The new stadium, the potential, going to my former club as an Edinburgh guy — it’s not an opportunity that comes around too often.
‘There are only two head coach jobs in professional rugby in Scotland. It then became something I was really keen to do and it moved pretty quickly.’
Blair may not have taken charge of any matches during his temporary stewardship of the national team as planned challenges against England A, Georgia and Romania all fell by the wayside as a result of Covid.
That stressful period, however, did at least give him an insight into the many other administrative and organisational skills a successful head coach needs.
Add to that a first proper dealing with player recruitment and there’s been a lot to get his head around.
‘Recruitment will be a long-term process,’ he revealed. ‘And what I’m learning is it will be a year-round process too.
‘Once I’ve been in the saddle for a bit longer I can start to get a bit of an understanding about areas where we need to increase numbers or where people’s contracts are up. Or from a budgeting point of view, what we can or can’t do.’
The return of the semi-professional Super 6 league after a season in cold storage gives Edinburgh an outlet to place fringe players who need game time. And Blair plans on using it regularly.
He added: ‘We’re not professional weightlifters or runners, we’re rugby players. And the only way I’m going to select people is based on what they do on a rugby pitch.
‘These are young guys who didn’t play much rugby last year so I wanted to get them into Super 6 rugby. My plan will be to get guys games unless they’re playing for us.’