Don’t mind the accents: The coaches restoring capital sporting glory
Clark Laidlaw is still sporting his Ted Lasso moustache and vows to be in the stands cheering on the Wellington Phoenix in a week’s time.
“I’m not sure I’ll be taking my top off if they get in front, but yeah … we love watching them play,” said the Hurricanes coach, whose own team are flying atop the Super Rugby Pacific table.
The moustache was grown for a team fancy dress party when Laidlaw – proud Scotsman and Celtic fan – went as “my hero” Lasso, the fictional American football coach from the hit Netflix series.
The actual football coach in this story is Giancarlo Italiano, Sydney-born to a Peruvian mother and Italian father. He’s known to all as Chiefy, the moniker given to him by a late friend that stuck.
Italiano had never been head coach of a senior football team until this year, when he succeeded Ufuk Talay after impressing as the Phoenix’s analyst then assistant coach.
Tomorrow, just before 6pm, he will stride onto AAMI Park in Melbourne for one of the club’s biggest matches in their 17-year history: leg one of a semifinal against Melbourne Victory which will extend to a rapidly filling Sky Stadium next Saturday (6.30pm kickoff). A win on aggregate, and the Nix’s first A-League grand final beckons, on May 25.
The Australian and Scotsman have overseen unprecedented simultaneous success for the city’s two highest-profile sporting teams – both in their first year at the helm.
The Hurricanes have played in two finals and won one title in 2016, across 28 years of Super Rugby. They’d never won their first eight matches until this year, and lead the Blues by one point ahead of a huge clash at Auckland’s Eden Park today (4.35pm kickoff ). Victory would put the Canes in the
“We have a great relationship, we see each other every day and have a casual talk about things.”
Giancarlo Italiano, on his coaching mate Clark Laidlaw
box seat to host the final at Sky Stadium on June 22.
The mutual admiration between Italiano and Laidlaw is clear. They work alongside each other with their teams based at the $108 million New Zealand Campus of Innovation and Sport in Upper Hutt, and the players mix freely. “He’s a great human, very open. We have a great relationship, we see each other every day and have a casual talk about things,” Italiano says. He insists they both brought fresh thinking but just added to what was already in place.
Laidlaw adds: “He seems like a really calm guy around the place and then gets fired up on the sideline, which is maybe that’s me and him … similarities. He’s a good man, a real good football man. “He cares about his players and wants them to be good, and he’s got a good personality.”
Their players responded, too. The Phoenix roster saw them tipped to finish last by some across the Tasman, pre-season. Italiano used those predictions as motivation as they racked up the wins at their Sky Stadium fortress.
Laidlaw brought the phrase “unite and excite” to his first team meeting, imploring his players to get the region on board and continue the exciting brand of rugby they were renowned for. Without their most influential player Ardie Savea, under skipper Brad Shields returning from England, they delivered.
Shields said of the Phoenix: “Being up in the UK, I probably appreciate football a little bit more than I did before I left, and to be in the same facility, it’s just good for Wellington sport in general having a couple of teams doing pretty well.
“When I go back to people coming up to me saying, ‘you got me back into rugby’. I think there’s an element to that … he’s got me back into football. And that’s really, really positive for the city and if we can continue on that trajectory together as a group over the next few years, it’s really powerful for the sporting environment.”
After signing autographs and posing for a photo with a yellow-shirted fan at Wellington Airport yesterday, a relaxed Italiano insisted his team remained calm and well prepared for the Melbourne cauldron. After two draws between the sides, the Phoenix won 1-0 last time they met, in Wellington.
“The players naturally understand what the context is. It is the biggest game of the season and next week will be even bigger, and then hopefully the third game will be even bigger than that,” he said.
“But if we start thinking about the next game and the game after and what’s going to happen, it’s a distraction. What we can control now is the performance in that first 45 minutes and see how we are after 180.”
Most likely with a few Hurricanes, their coach and many thousands of Wellingtonians roaring them on.