Coaching Culture with Ben Herring
Coaching Culture with Ben Herring is your weekly deep-dive into the often-overlooked “softer skills” of coaching—cultural innovation, communication, empathy, leadership, dealing with stress, and motivation. Each episode features candid conversations with the world’s top international rugby coaches, who share the personal stories and intangible insights behind their winning cultures, and too their biggest failures and learnings from them. This is where X’s and O’s meet heart and soul, empowering coaches at every level to foster authentic connections, inspire their teams, and elevate their own coaching craft. If you believe that the real gold in rugby lies beyond the scoreboard, Coaching Culture is the podcast for you.
Coaching Culture with Ben Herring
Wayne Smith: Great teams are built on meaning.
Questions? Text Ben Herring direct.
Wayne Smith, one of rugby's greatest strategic minds, takes us on an intimate journey through his extraordinary coaching career, revealing the cultural secrets behind multiple World Cup victories with the All Blacks and Black Ferns.
Known as "The Professor" for his analytical brilliance, Smith shares how he transformed struggling teams into champions by focusing on meaning beyond winning. From his innovative cultural work with the Crusaders using Shakespeare's Henry V to his complete reimagining of the Black Ferns program in just 12 weeks before their World Cup triumph, Smith demonstrates how effective coaching transcends tactical knowledge.
Most fascinating is Smith's revelation about the fundamental difference between coaching men and women: "The women have to feel good to play well. The men have to play well to feel good." This insight transformed his approach with the Black Ferns, embracing their pre-game music and dancing rather than imposing the silent, tense atmosphere typical of All Blacks match preparation.
Smith's methods challenge conventional wisdom at every turn. He banned box kicks, introduced Tuesday "club nights" with beer after intense training, and created controlled chaos in practice to develop players who could maintain clarity when games became unpredictable. His focus on simplification—limiting coaching points to just three themes per week—produced a flowing, joyful style of rugby that captivated fans and overwhelmed opponents.
Beyond technical innovation, Smith's philosophy that "people will rise to a challenge if it's their challenge" offers profound wisdom for leaders in any field. By asking questions rather than dictating answers, he empowered players to own their development and create teams that regenerate leadership from within.
What makes this conversation truly special is hearing how a master coach evolved throughout his career, constantly learning and adapting while staying true to his belief that rugby should be both effective and joyous. Listen now to transform your understanding of leadership, culture, and what makes teams truly exceptional.
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I think, a brilliant cultural expedition. We went on finding out about each other, so that was a big cornerstone. You just tell them all the time. It goes in one ear and out the other and that's how we operated and it simplified the whole thing and you could see the woman starting to flourish. I just wanted it to be something that I would remember and be special to them. Yeah, I'm not a great. I like it, but I couldn't tell one red wine from another. I wouldn't know a $100 bottle from a $10 bottle. I wouldn't know a $100 model from a $10 model.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Coaching Culture, the podcast about cultivating culture and leadership. I'm Ben Herring and I've been loving this side of the game for bloody ages. Today we sit down with Wayne Smith, who is widely known as the professor in rugby circles. He is a visionary coach and former All Black whose strategic brilliance and commitment to player growth have shaped some of the game's most successful teams. He has won two World Cups with the All Blacks in 2011-2015 and was head coach of the World Cup winning Black Ferns in 2021. He has been coaching for a lifetime and, at 67 years old, he's still going strong with his influence and continues to resonate and sets new standards for performance and innovation in rugby. It's a pleasure to sit down with him and talk about culture and leadership. Here he is. How do you define?
Speaker 1:culture. Well, in our game you define it as a winning culture. It's a diverse piece of a puzzle that you often develop over the years and that often changes over the years. When I started off as a younger coach and moving into the Crusaders in 97 as a head coach there, it was like it was a new team. It wasn't well accepted by the Christchurch crowd because there were Aucklanders in the team and people from all over the show, you know. And so and I'd just watched Henry V in the movies and I said to Gilbert Anoka, who I got the union to employ for the first time ever a sports psychologist spoke to him about could we theme something around the Battle of Agincourt speech. You know, st Crispin's Day, we few, we happy few, we band of brothers, for he today, she's his brother, she'll be my brother, etc. And so it was the start of that culture.
Speaker 1:So we put a video together. I'd heard hunters and collectors sing in hagley park holy grail. I thought, geez, that that would fit in well. So we pumped that out with this, with this video, and and it worked. You know, the boys, the boys bought it had nothing at all to do with who we were, I just wanted to create a, a vision driven or a vision-based sort of values-driven project that they hadn't been involved in before, and so it was new and it was exciting and it was different and it worked for for that group. But you know I contrast that with, say, the, the women that I coached. You know the black fans that we're going to talk about totally different concepts. You know we're playing in our own country major tournaments and New Zealanders was important to us, so you know it's horses for quarters, mate.
Speaker 2:Theme around Henry V and the Hunters and Collectors. I would imagine a lot of coaches would struggle with that concept if it wasn't heavily linked to rugby. What? How did you define that working?
Speaker 1:um, well, obviously you need to um relate it to what you're going to do as a rugby team. Um, so what we did we? We put in clips of rugby team. So what we did, we put in clips of previous games from the year before. You've got to remember, crusaders got last in 96, so there weren't a lot of real positive clips that we could show. But we could show some really sacrificial acts from players who we knew were going to be great players the Black Adders, meyerhofflers, marshalls, razor, gardner, those sorts of players we knew they were going to be good. So we centred on them, on their acts on the horses coming around the field and then led into Henry V. And then at the end of it I'll never forget this there was absolute silence and Andrew Merton's then piped up and said could you play it again, smitty? And that was the start. That was the start of something really special that has carried on, and I know Razor has used bits of what we used back then.
Speaker 1:The following year. We used Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali spoke at Harvard University. When they invited him up to speak, he recited the smallest or the shortest poem in history Me, we. Then he went and sat down. So that became something that we used in the Crusaders. So you know, we were looking for things all the time that would relate to what we were trying to do. We were trying to get the whole of the region to support us, rather than just Canterbury. You know, we went all the way up to Nelson and down to South Canterbury and so that whole. Yeah, we're doing this for ourselves, but we're also doing it for the collective we, which is you people, and we used it everywhere we went around the provinces. So you know, again, you've just got to find the right solution which is logical for your team at that time.
Speaker 2:And is it a little bit more emotional than sort of like you're trying to stir emotion here rather than any sort of like, whatever the opposite of the mental aspect or the concrete, like it feels like someone saying that was awesome, play it again. That's driving something deeper in them. Is that the intention of it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, clearly you want it to stick pretty early, and so that logic's key.
Speaker 1:So it has to attach to what you're trying to do, and so I think, yeah, to me it's got to be optimistic, it's got to be something that makes you proud, it's got to be easily understood and it's got to be something that you can then create some behaviours from, and so this is the key part.
Speaker 1:I think so, rather than just have one word values, I've always used statements, and they've always been created by the players, and in that particular year with Crusaders, it was like would have been a month, I reckon of sandpapering everything down by the players, and they would come back to me at a meeting and say this is where we're at with our, what our behaviours are, and then they would come back to me at a meeting and say this is where we're at with our, what our behaviours are, and then they would get voted on and we got down to maybe four or five behaviours that then went on a little card that we held had our creed on one side and then our behaviours on the other, and I've sort of every coach develops as you go, and I've developed that now to make sure that each individual player's behaviours and the staff, including the coaches and everyone else. Put their own statements up on the wall that relate to the team values. Put their own statements up what it's going to look like for them and then put in a.
Speaker 2:Sorry, is that just with sticky notes like post-it notes?
Speaker 1:No, no, we do it properly on a framework with maybe four or five statements as a team what we're going to do and then what that would look like for each individual. Like a little example would be I do what's right for the team, and when I was at Kobe in Japan, one of the players put up cleaned the toilets on a Friday night. That was something he wanted to do for the team, good man. And we had this rule of three. Rule number one was you know, you've got to live in your own excellence. You can't rely on everyone else driving you. You've got to drive yourself and live up to your standards.
Speaker 1:Rule number two was if you're not doing that, then appear. Another player can step in and it might be a confrontation or it might just be. Look, I can help you with something there. I see you're not working at the area that you said you're going to do. And rule number three you don't want to get to because that's come and see the coach. And so rule number one and rule number two tend to be pretty important. Yeah, yeah, because you come and see the coach. It's not going to be a good ending often. So, yeah, just that adherence to what you say you're going to do. I think is really important within the team.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. And would you place, when we're talking about culture, how do you rank the importance of it for a team of people? Would you say it's right up there as one of the key things in an environment, a good culture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would rate it at least 50-50 with the game, with everything that you're doing around, the trainings, the fitness, the dojo, all that sort of stuff. I would rank this right up there, because if you haven't got meaning then it's meaningless.
Speaker 1:And if you haven't got a team that wants to get better at getting better, then they get worse. Get better at getting better, then they get worse. If you want your leaders to build leaders to build leaders, so that you've got a program in place where, all of a sudden, when some of the leaders go, you're not stuck for leadership, and so I think all these things need to. They need to follow on and they need to survive, and they need to survive through, often, coaching changes and all sorts of things. I always try and take people, the new coaches, through what we've done to um to help them establish what they're going to do. I think it's important part part of having a team continue on that road that they're on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that phrase leaders building on, building on, building on, so it's almost like a regenerating process. Yeah, and is that sort of the rationale why teams like the Crusaders, like the All Blacks, consistently keep rolling like a machine in that front?
Speaker 1:yeah, um, you know you're walking in the footsteps of great players, often, um, particularly in the all blacks, also on the crusaders, as an example, or the chiefs, or whatever team you're in, kobe, um, black firms been a lot of great people have been before you, and so, understanding that and realising that you're just a keeper of the jersey for a short time and your job is to try and make it better if you can, which isn't always easy, I remember sitting down with Jerome Kaino when he left to go to France after a great career, you know, probably he was the best player at two World Cups, 2-11, 2-15. And I sat down with him for a cup of coffee and he said to me you know what, smithy, I don't think I've made the jersey better. And so I asked him where did you get the jersey off? I'd forgotten. And he said Gerry Collins, hey, how's the head? Did you get the jersey off? I'd forgotten.
Speaker 1:And he said Jerry Collins, well, there you go, pushed Jerome Kaino to be great, and that's you know. I think that concept's really important. You know we go all the way back to 1905, originals and the All Blacks when we talk about the past 1905, 1924, two teams that never had coaches and they had a lot of fun. They were self-motivated, they ran the show. They had a bloke on the 24 tour who thought he was going to be coach, but when he stepped out on the field, the captain said your job is to organise the hotels and the trains and my job is to run this team.
Speaker 2:And it wasn't like it was just a quick trip. It was like a three-month tour on the boat back then, wasn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, 12 weeks on a boat Actually the 2014,. They had a. So Cliff Porter created a process for each day and they started off. They had a breathing coach. They had a breathing coach on the boat, so before breakfast they would do their breathing, then they'd have breakfast, then they'd sit down. They called it the circle. So they'd sit down in the circle and they would throw in ideas for how they were going to play and Porter says in his book that a lot of the ideas were weird, but they listened to every idea and eventually, after 12 weeks, they had come up with a pretty good plan. After that, before lunch, they trained on the boat and practiced the plays that they decided to come up with. Lunch probably a snooze, I don't know. Then another run run the afternoon. They did this for 12 weeks, so they're pretty well organized by the time you know they got there yeah, it's fascinating, isn't it same?
Speaker 1:amount of time, same amount of time I had with black beans 12 weeks.
Speaker 2:Well, right, mate, so we'll get to the black ferns, because, look it's. It's a great journey for you and a great change up. But I'm really interested in what you. When you went in there, what did you have on your must-do list? You, you had a bit of a brief and this is the team. What was on your must do? Did you get your breathing coach in first, sit around and assert your ideas in, or how did that roll? What was important? What were the big rocks?
Speaker 1:Look, I probably need to go through just a wee bit of the history first. So in 221, the Black Ferns toured Europe Midst of COVID. They had very few games, hardly any training camps playing against the two best teams in the world, england and France, and it's well documented that they I think they shipped 169 points in four test matches against those teams lost. Every test match Came home. Some of the players were disgruntled. There was one of the women, whilst they were in quarantine in Auckland, went on social media and wrote about some mental health issues that she'd had created, supposedly by the staff and the coaches. That created a storm. Clearly it also led New Zealand Rugby Union to do a review, which they used. A couple of lawyers and Gilbert and Oka helped out on that, and so in the meantime nothing was really happening.
Speaker 1:Graham Henry and I had we had after watching the team play in Europe. We got in touch with each other. He rang me and said do you see the Blackfans playing? I said yeah, I've been looking at them on Sports Code, looking at how they played and what they could do better. And he said I'm doing the same and we changed notes and we were just about exactly on the same page. So we decided we would ring the coaches to see if they wanted us to show these clips to them. We would ring the coaches to see if they wanted us to show these clips to them. So we had this meeting in Auckland. Two of the coaches were on Zoom, the head coach, glenn Moore, who was a friend of ours. He was there and we went through the clips of what we thought didn't go well and what we thought needed to change and got huge buy-in. So at that point New Zealand Union got hold of both of us and asked if we would be advisors in that sense to the team and go and have a look at some trainings and give some advice. So that's how it started off, leading into April so you've got to remember that the World Cup was going to be played in October, november.
Speaker 1:So, leading into April, they'd obviously had a camp or two I wasn't involved in and I was invited down to a camp at Christchurch when I was literally on the plane coming down, the report, the review report, came out and it was tough. It was tough for the staff, it was tough for the coaches. Um, a couple of coaches, couple of the staff, resigned on the spot so didn't come into the camp. Um, the head coach, glenn Moore, is a very good man. He was stunned by it and it was like it was difficult for him to speak. He didn't feel like he could get up in front of the team. Wes Clark, who became one of my assistant coaches for that year once I got into the role, he stayed on. And Whitney Hanson, who was an intern, she was keen to stay on, but that was it, and so I got off the plane, go into the camp and, as you can imagine, it's a bit of a mess. So I got a call from New Zealand Rugby to talk about if I would take over a head role. Glenmore was still there at that point so I said, well, look, let's see how Glen goes and I'll just help out.
Speaker 1:So that week I did virtually every session. I coached every session. I had laryngitis. When I got home I was screaming at the girls, I was grabbing by the jersey, saying where are you going?
Speaker 1:There'd been a lot of detail. You know there's a lot of structure, a lot of detail in the game these days and you know the girls were told you've got to get over that side of the field and you've got to get to that side of the field and I'd say, well, we're attacking here, so why don't we attack here, and then you can migrate there. You could perhaps, if there's a ruck over there, you can get up and you can stay there. But you know, I want everyone coming forward and attack. And I got home, actually I got home and then on the weekend I could hardly talk and Trish, my wife, was there and I said New Zealand Union had just rung me to say Glenn had resigned and would I take over the team. I said to Trish I don't think I can do this and she gave me a big hug and said well, it's April, no one else is going to be able to do it. Everyone else is in a job.
Speaker 2:Gosh, there's pressure from all fronts. So to be able to do it, everyone else is in a job. Gosh, there's pressure from all fronts.
Speaker 1:So you've got to do it. So I had a bit of a wrangle with Mike Anthony, the head of high performance, and he had rung to say you need to be head of coaching and director of coaching. Head coach and director of coaching. I said, no, I'll be director of coaching and we'll get another head coach in. No, there's no one else here to do it, so you need to be head coach and director of coaching. I thought we'd agreed that I was going to be director of coaching and they would find someone else, but the next day in the newspaper it came out that I was head coach and director of rugby.
Speaker 2:The whole shebang yeah the whole shebang.
Speaker 1:yeah, so that's how I got into the role. So you asked me about what the big rocks were. I felt weighed down by big rocks.
Speaker 2:at that point there's too many big rocks, isn't there?
Speaker 1:So my first day as head coach. So I had talked Mike Cronin to joining us as forward coach, which was a hell of a cue Best coach in the world. But Mike Cronin's proven that again with a lot of these, not just a scrum coach at all, like a great all-round forward coach. Ruck and moor coach likes to get involved in the backs if he can. I worked closely with him in defence when I was in the All Blacks because you've got to be aligned with the forwards and the backs. So I was really lucky with that and we continued on with Whitney, who was flourishing working with Mike, and we continued on with Whitney who was flourishing working with Mike. So they were going to be the two in charge of the forwards. I wanted to do virtually everything else but Wes was defence coach and I'd worked with Wes Clark for a number of years as a mentor, so we were on the same page so we worked well together. So that was our. I had the coaching group um got New Zealand Rugby to employ Graham Henry who had, as I say, had been on the same page as me about how we should play. But I wanted him to be aligned to the team um to work with referees to um, maybe um help out with world rugby. If there was any issues that we had but to be a part of the team, to be there every day if we could, as part of the team so the girls could check in. And that was our team. And we had quite a disparate group of staff that at the time I thought there weren't a lot of people there who had worked previously in rugby. There were a few, but I soon realised they were very capable people and so aligning the team wasn't just aligning the playing team and the women, it was aligning us with the staff. And it took a while, but I'm really proud of what that staff delivered and they've gone on to join other teams and have careers. But it was hard work but it was one of the most exciting things. I think I got out of the whole thing Anyway.
Speaker 1:So my first meeting as head coach was with a wider squad. Chris Landrum from New Zealand Union had come down to apologise to the women, to the players, about what had occurred. It was amazing listening to it. Our Kamatua, luke Crawford, was there. Fantastic man, great man, matua died not long ago. Actually Big loss to New Zealand rugby.
Speaker 1:So he got up and spoke and he had a big sculpture rock sculpture in his hand and he explained what it was. It was a taonga and he was going to pass it around the room and each player and staff member. He asked them, if they committed wholly to this campaign to put their hand on top of the taonga and if they didn't commit, they could just pass it on. So you can imagine I was at the end and I was looking at who was putting their hand on top and who wasn't, and quite a few, quite a number of the women didn't put their hands on top and so it got passed around. So that was interesting. So there still was some trauma associated with what had gone on on both sides on trauma for the staff and the coaches that had left and obviously for the woman who had a mental health issue.
Speaker 1:So the time had got to me and I just thought I've got to stand up here Like someone's actually got to be positive here. The optimism's a big part of winning. And so I just put my hand on top and said look, I absolutely, 100% commit to this. And I put it down and I said you know, girls, we're going to win the World Cup at Eden Park in front of 42,000, but we're not going to win today. We've got I forget how many days it was 187 days or something before we played a final at Eden Park but we're going to win this thing and it won't be easy.
Speaker 1:So I started with that and then we go to my pippiha, where I was from and who I played for and what it was like on my day, and who I played for and what it was like on my day and whatnot tried to make it humorous as well as serious. I finished with, you know, in the All Blacks, like I wasn't a great at the game. I always wanted to be in a great team. But when I joined the All Blacks, you had to get up every day and try and be the best in the world. I said to them get up every day, be the best in the world. I sat down and Graham Henry got up and did his PPR and that was the start of it. So it was optimism, but also a realism that we had a lot of work to do, ladies, and we need to get started. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's great. And when you talked about how quickly did those ladies that didn't potentially buy in by putting their hand on top, how did you address them and that kind of dynamic?
Speaker 1:So that week we decided that we'd play a game at the end of the week. I didn't want to play any other women's teams, I wanted to play men's teams, I wanted to play quality men's teams. And so we had the week and then we were playing on the Friday against Lincoln University Academy team. So a lot of the boys from Hamilton boys, hastings boys, you know, the top boys in the country and it was going to be situational.
Speaker 1:It wasn't full contact at that point, but it was pretty much contact, yeah, um, and so that's how we got started and I'd um, I didn't know a lot of the women at that point, um, so I could remember who put the hand on top and who didn't. They were your targets, but it didn't, it didn't affect me at all because I felt it was our job and I wasn't in this by myself at all. I had great coaches. Those coaches I've just talked about are great coaches. I had Graham Henry he's the greatest man I know in the game and the staff that were keen to try hard and really get this thing going. Great manager in Lauren Cunane. So we were in it together and so I was reliant on some of the others to, you know, determine who was going to go on the field, who we were going to take off.
Speaker 1:We played in quarters against this Lincoln team, so after three quarters we were about ten tries down, I reckon, and we hadn't run any ball all week. I'd practiced. I just worked on flattening up, on attacking, on keeping the ball alive, counterattacking if they kicked it to us. So I'm out there in the middle. Wes comes along and he was taking girls off and putting players on and he put this player on and she grabbed the team together and she said what the hell are you doing, girls? Like all week Smitty's been working on hitting the ball hard, keeping it alive in the tackle, moving it wide, playing with pace, and all you're doing is kicking the ball hard, keeping it alive in the tackle, moving it wide, playing with pace, and all you're doing is kicking the ball away.
Speaker 1:And so I went back to the bench and I asked Wes, who's that girl, who was, or that lady who was talking to the team? And he said oh, that's Ruhe De Mont. So she Blackburn. He said oh, you just played a few games, probably not a key player or may not even make the world cup, but you know she's a good, tidy player. I said to right then, and there she's going to be my captain. And he said you can't name a captain like, you don't even know them. She's going to be my captain because she gets it and you know, 10 months later she's world player of the year. You could just see in her an intelligence. Um, like she's a lawyer, admitted to the bar. Um didn't speak english until she was 12. A maori speaker, um drove down to auckland university from walkworth when she was 17 enrolled herself in law and a ba enrolled herself in law and a BA drove down to College Riffles Rugby Club to see if she could get a game of footy.
Speaker 2:That's awesome.
Speaker 1:And you know she's a great other game. So that's how it started. That was. I was in a world that I'd experienced before with my great mentor, laurie O'Reilly, who had started women's rugby and was a great friend of mine, and I'd worked with the teams that he coached the women's teams. When I was director of coaching for Canterbury, I had three women Jackie Apiata, natasha Wong and Mary Davies as staff coaches for me. We used to run coaching courses, that sort of thing, so I knew a wee bit about it. But I was pretty much over my head and swimming as hard as I could to try and work out what we were going to do and how we were going to do it. And I had so many jobs. You know I was working with a leadership group. I was working on some cultural stuff that we could buy into and I was coaching the team. So I asked New Zealand Union if I could get Alan Bunting out of the Chiefs to run the cultural leadership side with me, because I knew him and I knew how good he was at that. I got the okay there and we were starting to put some ideas in place which he helped meld and he created a program called Te Whare Tapafa. So we started.
Speaker 1:Each of us had to build our own house. On your laptop, on your computer, build your own house could be photos of your house or you could build it yourself. The foundation was to be where you're from. Who came before you? You? What's your history? Um, we looked then other things like um, what are your superpowers, what do you need to? What do you need to improve? I was really keen on strengths with these women that's. We haven't got time to improve everything, so let's work on our strengths, get better at those. Who are your mentors, what are your values, All these sorts of things.
Speaker 1:And we decided we would present those in front of the team during the whole year, which is what we did, and we set about it after about a week or so together. I presented first, I think Alan Bunting was second, ruahei did hers, ruby Tui did hers, I think Kendra Coxedge and Wes Clark finished. I think there were six of us and it took just over an hour, I suppose, to do it, but it was huge and you could see emotion coming out. There were a few hugs afterwards and then subsequently, through the season, as women were getting up to present, they got longer and longer and more and more emotional, you know, because lives can be complicated and these are special women, you know, to get to that stage to fight like they had to to be recognised, you know it's nothing like the men's rugby.
Speaker 1:These women belong to their clubs and they've got to get through club rugby. They've got to progress from there. Who sees them? You know? Who's helping them? They've got to do a lot of it themselves. Who's helping them? They've got to do a lot of it themselves. And it was just so impressive listening to them about who they were, where they came from, and it was a brilliant, I think, a brilliant cultural expedition.
Speaker 1:We went on to finding out about each other, so that was a big cornerstone. We cut the team up into wharees, so each of us coaches had our own wharee of women maybe 10 in each, I think and we were to meet with them every week, at least once a week. But it wasn't about rugby. It was about how you're going things okay, okay at home. What's it like in your hub? Are you taking all the stuff back to the hub and teaching the other women and that you play with there, because they're in hubs around the country? Um, so it was just managing issues, um, just making sure that that they were right, that they felt comfortable in the environment. I'll talk about some issues we had later, but I was trying to make it fun, make them feel comfortable. These are women who love logic. If they can see the logic in it, they'll commit to it.
Speaker 2:Is that a big difference in your experience?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think they're more questioning, probably more questioning than the men.
Speaker 2:Ask the why a lot more?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had to get in front of the leadership group pretty early on. I'm probably skipping ahead, but I'd created a style that I wanted us to play in. But I'd created a style that I wanted us to play in and I'd work with the other coaches on it. Like I said to Mike Cron could you get us one second scramble? I don't want to scramble for penalties, I want channel one ball because we've got the best backs in the world. I want channel one ball and I want to get it out flat and hard and fast as we can and attack straight away. And Chrono was just. I've been wanting to do that my whole career, you know, and so I had this sort of this real buy-in, you know. And Wes, I said to Wes you know you're not just defence coach, you know, we've got to work together on a counter-attack. So I'm going to ban box kicks. I'm famous for banning box kicks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you are famous for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's a hell of a shock to Kendra Cox there, john, I say she wasn't able to box kick, but it was one of the issues when they were in France and England in 21. You know, they kicked a lot of ball away, gave a lot of line outs away and allowed England to drive, get another penalty, kick to touch another penalty, you know, and so on, so banned them. We created a kicking strategy that worked for us. We only kicked six or seven times in a game, but you know, I wanted the ball to at least bounce three times If we were kicking, if we weren't kicking to each other. I wanted us to either kick to each other like a crossfield kick, so we could attack down those wide channels, or, if you're going to kick like I had to bounce three times, which then created pressure on them. They often had to kick it back in a hurried fashion, or we could catch them, maybe in a turnover, maybe shove them into into touch. So, um, kicking strategy was important, but the numbers were.
Speaker 1:I didn't want us to kick a lot, I just wanted us to shape the opposition. And once we'd shaped them and spread the defence a bit, then we would reshape them by going through the middle or going close to the ruck or going back blind. That would shape the defence narrow again. Then we'd go wide again and that's basically how we played and it was logical to them. They could see that we wanted to create chaos. But if you create chaos then you've got to be the team with clarity. You've got to know where to run next. It's no good you being confused like the other team is. So we did a hell of a lot of work at trainings on creating chaos. I had multiple balls. I had yellow cards, red cards. I was making them run around the field with a red card, run around the post with a yellow card. Another ball in. It would stop.
Speaker 2:What was the cards for Smitty?
Speaker 1:Just to create confusion, chaos, you'd have to hold it up. I'd just you go.
Speaker 1:You're a red card round the field before you join back in oh, I got you yeah yeah, yeah, just take them in and out of the game, test their mental strength, create the chaos that we wanted to create in the game, you know. And then we'd sit down after training. We'd sit down in a circle the first couple of months. I would just say how was that, girls? And you'd get the. I swear to you, you're just in a bad mood today. I couldn't concentrate. I was fumbling the ball because you were yelling and you were doing this, you were doing that, and someone like Rura Ho would step in and say can't you see what he's doing, girls? Some are like Rua Hau would step in and say can't you see what he's doing, girls? We're going to win the World Cup at Eden Park in front of 42,000. We're going to do it against the best ball back in the world. So we have to create a different game and we've just got to get better at it. And that's what we did. We got better at it and I would say my last two runs before the semifinal and the final, were phenomenal, because our team that wasn't starting and was playing against us was probably better than our starting team at training and they were painting false pictures and forcing us to play a certain way that they wanted us to play. They were doing exactly what we wanted to do in the opposition. They were doing it to us and it was brilliant. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1:Owen Eastwood was there for one of those trains, I think it was the one before the final. He talks often about it on his podcast and that about this amazing chaos, but the clarity through it to right now they're defending wide, now we go through there, or now they've brought the wing up. There's only a fullback there. Now we do a three-bounce kick and we force it back again. And I just became clearer about it all and through the whole thing as well. You know you asked about big rocks. The other big rock was. You know, it's still a game and games are supposed to be fun, and so we were adamant as a coaching team that we were going to have fun, no matter what happened. We were going to really enjoy it.
Speaker 1:So we created a week. Some of it was based on some hormonal research that we'd done with the All Blacks back in. I think it started about 2005, way on tour, and the boys were spitting into test tubes. They were then taken home and about a month after the tour we were given the evidence of what I don't know really really good gains, what our hormonal balance was, and poor gains, what it was, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So we broke it down to something pretty simple right, your cortisol. You needed to sort of reduce that a bit in those first few days of recovery. So we created the 72 hours of recovery, finishing sort of on a Tuesday night, and then we built the testosterone up from sort of Thursday on. So I developed a program with the other coaches and the staff around. That Didn't get full support often because it was different to the staff, but one of the things I was adamant on was physicality in the dojo. So we had one-hour dojo sessions for the backs and an hour for the forwards and then they swapped and did their weights. We did that every Tuesday and it was full contact. But the theme was the safest techniques are the most effective, and so we worked on safety, chin up, eyes open, head, right side of the tackle, all this sort of stuff.
Speaker 2:Did you have to go more into that detail with this team, as opposed to say, the All Blacks? Is it more?
Speaker 1:of that?
Speaker 2:Do you have to go to that level? Would, you do that with the All Blacks.
Speaker 1:No, they've had pretty good basic coaching, these women, yeah, you know. So they were pretty aware of that and they had real steel. Like, I've used dojos for full contact training since I was with the Crusaders in 97. I've lost a couple of players at different times because of the intensity and the physical contact in there, because of the intensity and the physical contact in there. But, yeah, I found that some of the women's dojos by the end of our campaign were probably the toughest I've ever coached, like full bore. Yeah, I often show video to. If I'm doing Zooms with other coaches, I often show them video of it because it's amazing, you see this full contact, maybe 2v1, in the tackle. If I'm doing Zooms with other coaches, I often show them a video of it because it's amazing, you see this full contact, maybe 2v1 in the tackle, trying to steal the ball, juggle the ball, which you're a bloody good at. We'd always finish with Mike Cron's pub fight, which is a bit more chaotic, free for all. So didn't get huge buy-in by the medical staff. However, by the end of the World Cup they came and saw me and said that's probably the best thing we've ever seen in rugby, smitty, because we're not getting any contact injuries, and we weren't. You know, we got one broken thumb Liana McAllister in the semifinal, but that was about it. So, yeah, the safest techniques are the most effective.
Speaker 1:And then I wanted you know, these women love their clubs, you know and so I was really keen for us to have club nights. We decided to have them on a Tuesday night. Wear your jersey. Aisha Letilinga was our club captain. We voted on her to be a club captain, so the girls went and bought a, went to an op shop and bought her a little pink blazer. We all brought badges and put it down the lapels and we were running a mini team competition right from the start of the campaign, right through trainings, and so we carried those on on the Tuesday night club night.
Speaker 1:So we had mini team competitions, games, girls were allowed a drink if they wanted one. We often had food trucks come in to feed them. We had a really good nutritionist, kirstie, and she drove all that. Sometimes we'd have a Polynesian theme, sometimes a Maori theme. We'd have a hangi. You know, I just wanted it to be something that I would remember and be special to them. Again didn't get huge support initially because they could have a beer and they like a beer. This was Tuesday night. I keep reminding myself it's Tuesday night. You know, we've had a tough game Saturday. We've had recovery day Sunday. We've worked pretty hard on Monday getting ready for the week. Tuesday's been really hard Dojo, and then a tough session in the afternoon. They deserve a beer or a red wine if they want one, and not only that, I think we deserve one.
Speaker 2:How did you get pushback on that? Because when you associate high performance, it's the last thing you think of, right, and I'd imagine you were getting pushback from people that were taking a traditional view of high performance as anything that's negative for the body is a bad thing. You shouldn't do it. But clearly you were thinking there's an emotional or a mental aspect to having a beer, having a wine, having a social get-together that outweighs the scientists, the alcohol content. What's your thoughts on that? A?
Speaker 1:hundred percent whole content. What's your thoughts on that 100? You know I could link it scientifically to the dropping of cortisol and, um, laughter does that? Um, you know, uh, relaxing, recovering, um got a day off the next day, wednesday, which is recovery day, and so you've got plenty of time to then build your testosterone and get ready. And if you saw how, if you saw our gps numbers and how hard these women were working, um, yeah, a couple of, a couple of beers wasn't going to hurt them and if, if, they felt good about it, then you know that was a real, a real bonus. Not everyone had a drink, obviously, but most that's what they would do in their club, and so we just tried to keep it as normal as possible.
Speaker 2:What would you say to an amateur coach that's looking at something like that, trying to take a different sort of stance? If they're training once, twice, three times a week, would you suggest that laughter and maybe a bear is is a good for team environment that actually makes a rugby team go better or more collective yeah, I would say most club teams would do that certainly.
Speaker 1:Um, the idea we were to work with why he athletic now and again, and that certainly. I worked with Waihi Athletic now and again, and that's certainly stop after training and have a beer. When I played at Belfast or Pitaru Athletic, I myself wouldn't have had a beer. I would have had one on Saturday night, but that would be my choice. I didn't like drinking during the week myself, but we weren't working anywhere near as hard as I'm talking about a program, a weekly program here. That was hard out, yeah, and they needed and we had to have fun through it and I and um don't get me wrong, the women find a lot of their own fun anyway. You know that they do all sorts of things, um, and they've got a vibrant nature and they love their music. You know how we have speakers that big now. Yeah, theirs are that big.
Speaker 2:I've heard stories about you and Chrono sitting on the bus and the music that was played on the way to games and things, and you looked at each other and were like I have to just embrace this a little bit. Was there a lot of those moments where you just had to take your own context and your own bias out and say let's just let this roll and see how this sort of stuff goes. And a bit of an experiment and an adventure and a journey for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've been asked a lot around the difference, you know, between the men and the women, the All Blacks and the Black firms, and you know I've always said that the women have to feel good to play well.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And the game started off as, I guess, a hobby, for most of them Wanted to play in amongst the boys, became serious about it and they came through in a certain way compared to the boys. The boys have to play well to feel good. That's the difference to me. So what it would look like, say, on the bus to a test match, if you're with the All Blacks or the Crusaders or the Chiefs or whoever, it'd be pretty much earphones on guys. You know sleeping. You could cut the tension with a knife. Same with the staff. You know you're sitting there, maybe having a bit of a snooze. Now, sometimes you're going to Twickenham, for example, for a test match. You could be on the bus for 40 minutes or an hour, I think for the World Cup semi, in the final in 2015,. We were an hour 20 in the bus going to Twickenham and, as I say, you can feel that tension With the women. They're pumping out this music, they're dancing in the aisles, they're braiding each other's hair. I had Kendra Cox edge about three seats behind me and she'd be singing and screaming at someone and laughing. It's hard that's the only picture I can paint to say that's how different it is. And so the first time, the first game of the World Cup. So before the World Cup we didn't have buses, we didn't even stay in hotels. Half the time we stayed in a hostel up at High Performance Hostel up in North Harbour, but we had minivans and so it wasn't such an issue to us. But our first game, heading to Eden Park for the first World Cup game against Australia, became apparent what it was going to be like. On the bus and Graeme Henry and Crono were sitting across from me. I could see a look of astonishment on Ted's face. Crono was trying to sleep and, yeah, I wasn't too keen on the whole thing because it was just so different. I hadn't realised that this would happen on the bus. I spoke, so we got into the changing room I'll speak about perhaps a bit later about how we simplified the week but get in there, maybe have 30 seconds, then we go to warm-up. We'd come back in, I'd get the poise out, play poie and I'd be singing away and then off they'd go and parent it. That's how they play. So I got used to it. Chrono never did.
Speaker 1:I spoke to the leadership group about it a couple of times. Kendra Coxedge, who to me is the greatest, black Fern, I think. If you look at her numbers at a number of games and her success, she's right up there, you know, with the very best. She came to me she said stop talking about the bloody music, smitty, we're not going to change, it's how we are, it's how we get ready for games and you're just going to have to put up with it. And so I just thought she's right, she's dead right. I just started to enjoy it in the end.
Speaker 2:Did you get requests?
Speaker 1:I felt good about it. I think for the final it was slightly quieter, but not much. One of the games, one of the reserves was running around with a GoPro in the warm-up and made the mistake of coming and trying and interviewing me, so I cut that. But in general, yeah, I worked hard with the coaches and the staff and the players to determine what was right for us.
Speaker 2:What did you change? Because you said you got used to it. But did you have to change a few things? Like your voice went in the first week of the training, did you have to change a few things about yourself, going into a different environment for you, like, did you have to go right, I can't be this smithy. I've got to change the way I do things to accommodate the group and the culture that's here.
Speaker 1:Well, that was my intention, but you get me in rugby boots on a rugby field. I don't care what team it is, and I'm going to be pretty sharp with them.
Speaker 2:That's a little bit of an insight into you, isn't it? Because you're such a personable, beautiful man in any conversation. But when you cross that white line, there's an alter ego which comes out which is super focused, driven, says it how it is will cut someone down if needed, no problems, it's a different. You isn't it when it walks, yeah yeah, I'm a competitor.
Speaker 1:Um, the the women certainly realized that that was the case, that there wasn't going to be a walk in the park. Um, I use live video training have done for years, so we would work on something and there's a lot to change, you know, there's a hell of a lot being that, um, I wanted to change, I wanted to simplify the whole game, but that in itself is complicated, you know, because you're taking away a lot of the structure, a lot of the detail, and we were working on new passing technique, being able to pass off either foot so we get closer to the opposition. When I first started with them, if we had a scrum on our 22, you know, the wing and the fullback, our attacking wing and fullback, would be back in their 22. That's how deep they were. Oh right, yeah, you know, and I wanted to play on top everyone coming forward, keep the ball alive. I wanted tight forwards to be able to join in, so there was a lot of skill work to be able to join in. So there's a lot of skill work to be done with them and they were awesome.
Speaker 1:We weren't allowed to do any body comp stuff, you know, fat testing, and dissuaded from doing Broncos or any testing. Well, part of that review it was advice, I suppose, that there should be no body shaming in the team and so, um, and I was fine with it, like I could. You can see. You can see how hard the girls are working. You can see how their bodies are changing. Yeah, yeah, I didn't need to test them and so we worked harder, I think, than they've ever worked in their lives. They are doing testing now and it's sort of changed a wee bit and they would be testing way better than that team tested.
Speaker 1:But we tested well where it counted and that was on the field and keeping the play going. You know, we just never stopped. We just kept attacking, kept offloading, kept playing at speed. The skill level came up. The support player wanted everyone coming forward. You know, you look at a lot of rugby today and they tend to play sort of three phases and you've got players out here waiting there for their turn to come forward, waiting for their turn to be the move. But I wanted everyone coming forward because I wanted us to be able to keep the ball alive. And you know, if you're a tight forward and you didn't want to be in that back line. I'd want them to step back slightly so they could clean out or keep the ball alive for us.
Speaker 2:Are you referring to? A lot of teams have a structure and they just wait to play that structure out, rather than just going with it.
Speaker 1:There are teams including, I think, a lot of the women's teams in that era were actually slowing the ball up to get their structures right so they could go again, which just doesn't suit with the way I want to play rugby.
Speaker 2:It's not the way you want it.
Speaker 1:I want it to be joyous. I want it play rugby. It's not the way you want it. I want it to be joyous, I want it to be. I want us to have a crack at it. You know, one of the proudest things from the World Cup was I read somewhere that Rui De Mont had more offloads in the World Cup than any other team.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:And that's what we were after.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. I guess on the flip side of that, like you got a, you got a whole lot of these things right which ultimately led to you know winning the greatest title. But when you reflect on it, did you get a few things wrong along the way. Can you share any things where you missed the mark, on either cultural stuff or or otherwise, in that group?
Speaker 1:yeah, um, like when you get up and speak to the women, you've got to start with a song or a joke. I wrote poems supposed to be funny poems, and that was a bit challenging at the start. After about a month and a wee bit maybe a month and a half the leadership group asked if I could have a meeting with me, which our manager ran, lauren, and they said Smitty, the way you're coaching and the way you want us to play with our structure is different to everything we've done before in this team and different to some of the other mindsets of the staff in this team. And I knew that was the case, and so my answer to them was look, it's a way I would coach If I was coaching the All Blacks or coaching whoever. It's a way I would coach. Coach if I was coaching the All Blacks or coaching whoever. It's the way I would coach. If you prefer to go back the other way, that's fine by me, because you've got coaches in here who could take over and I didn't want to stuff up the World Cup if it was going to be something that didn't work for them. But they came back and said look, no, we want you to keep coaching the same way. We're really keen to change. We can see the logic of what we're trying to do and we think it'll be exciting. So that worked out pretty well, because I was trying to teach them so much, ben, and you know they were used to in the warm-ups, just doing athletic warm-ups, you know, with the trainer, and you know I just thought it was a waste of time and I wanted them to warm up using the activities that I was introducing for our attack and for what wes was doing with the defense. And so, um, we started working with the leaders on them, leading the others and amongst the athletic staff, you know, whistling, bring the girls around. Right now we're going to do some of these sharp line drill or his box support drill, or we'll just do some hits for Crono and Wes or whatever, and then they'd go back into the athletic park and then they'd do it again. So we found ways to change and get around things.
Speaker 1:But it was pretty obvious to me through the early games and whilst we were playing well and we won the Pac-4 and we were winning the Norio Riley series, it wasn't as fluent as what I wanted and I had a meeting in Adelaide that changed. My coaching life sounds funny. I'd applied for the pension two days before you'd think I would have known, but I was concerned that the players were more worried about doing what I was teaching them in the skills and thinking too much and therefore it wasn't really flowing. So I met a guy, ashley Ross, who used to work for New Zealand Cricket. Great biomechanist, great man, great coach. He came for a cup of coffee and he said look, there's this woman, sian Barris, who works for the South Australian Institute and she specialises in skill acquisition. Would you like to meet with her? I said that would be great because she's a woman. She'll have a much better feel for it than I have and I can talk to her about my issues with the girls overthinking. She came in for a coffee and Sian is a turn coach for Australians for me, and I said oh, oh, like is that a difficult skill to learn? She said it's hugely complex and it's important, hugely important in the outcome. You know the turn is often where races are won. And she said to stop them thinking too much about the technical side, I have three themes during the week and all we do it at swim training is if we have a review.
Speaker 1:We review those themes. We don't review all the bits and pieces, and I thought that's a what a great idea. And so I started. That went back to New Zealand, so I'd start with a flip chart. Each three theme Might be a snap your head to sight the receiver. What would be another one? I can't think of one at the moment, but they were just simple, just simple things. You know that'll be up, and so at training, the leaders would get the girls around and they would review the three themes.
Speaker 1:How are we doing with stepping ahead? How are we doing with passing off the wrong foot? How are we doing with making the right call to the right person? Because that's important, particularly amongst chaos. You need solutions, not a problem. So what I mean by that? The girls will be calling oh, space out wide, space out wide. But that's a problem because it makes Ruae think so how do I get the ball there? Whereas if you say, sniper for a kick pass to the wing to get it wide or a double miss, she can execute at pace, and that's what I wanted. So we started making the right calls to the right person. That was one of our themes and we would just review that during the week and that would go up on the changing room before the test match. I'd have 30 seconds to say that's what we're going to do.
Speaker 1:At halftime, girls, I'll set out this big rugby field mat that I'd set out with how I saw the opposition defending, and I'd set that out just before they got into the changing room at halftime. Then they'd come in, they'd review those themes. We'd have a look at where can we attack now and when that changes, how will we change our attack. And that's how we operated and it simplified the whole thing and you could see the, the women, starting to flourish and feel more comfortable. You know, at um, at taking what we're doing at training into the game. I've got a couple of examples.
Speaker 1:So we're playing fr France in the semifinal and I'd shown the ladies, if we get a scrum down in their 22, their open winger is going to come racing in and try and stop the ball at centre. It's the only time she does it. The rest of the time she stays out wide. She'll come flying and trying to. So we decided for Ruho to put a pass over the second in the centre to the wing, and she'd just run and score a try. And so we're getting towards half-time.
Speaker 1:Down to France, they had a drop-out from a goal-line drop-out. It went out on the full. So now we've got a scrum right under the post five metres out. Here we go Going to do that play. I could see their winger, you know, coming in Ball, goes in left, blows the whistle free, kick black ferns and I'm like damn, you know we're not going to do the play, but they did the play from the tap, yeah, and I just thought that was amazing. That is clarity of thought. So just they just did that, just tapped it, bang, bang out to, out to. I think Stacey was on the wing and she scored under the sticks. It's just that quick thinking under pressure, in chaotic situations that really, really impressed me.
Speaker 2:And that was a big shift for you in your coaching, like with this group, is to change that. Instead of saying what there is, what you want.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, just simplifying it. I told myself really that I had to be complex at the start because of all the different skills, the support play, playing flat, hitting holes, passing close to the opposition. Again, in the final there was just something that made me so proud that try just after half time. That wasn't me that set that up, so I'd set up the defence on the ground, on the mat that I had, and just before they ran out, Real Hay brought the girls over and we said it's bloody obvious, we're the Spacers, ladies, it's their kick-off to us. We catch that kick-off. You've got to do everything you can to catch it, because we're not great catchers of kickoffs. Everything you can and we're going to hit that space.
Speaker 1:And so they kicked off and the ball was going out on the full and it was going to ruby tooey and if you watch the video, she lifts her heels. So she was standing on the line, she lifts her heels, she catches it and she throws the ball back in. You know, most teams would just let it go out and have a scrum big at halfway. But no, she got it in and then we got that great try. Stacey Walker scored, but it's the last pass. Renee Holmes, full speed drawing the fullback, Didn't want the fullback to be able to recover and tackle Stacey and she passed the ball with both feet in the air. No tick on the pass made the pass and Stacey went around and the fullback couldn't do anything. And if there were two really proud moments in the whole year for me it would be those two the French one and that one.
Speaker 2:And did you lose your voice at the end of the journey just from shouting in the box?
Speaker 1:No, no, I'm very quiet in the box and we're quite a studious box. You know Whitney's very good. She's very calm. In fact, when that last line out occurred against England, you know, we'd been trying to get the jumpers to go up and contest but there was so much pressure that they weren't picking the cues. They knew what the cues were for the opposition because Whitney and Chrono had done a really good video during the week of what to look for, but under that pressure they hadn't.
Speaker 1:So I was yelling at Chrono through the mic get Jonah up. Get Jonah up in this line-up, mate. She's just got to go up, otherwise the game's gone. But he didn't have his earphones and so I'm screaming in there. And then Whitney just picked up her microphone and said to who was it? Renee Whitcliffe on the sideline, just tell Jonah to get up. So Renee went to tell Jonah, but Jonah said no, I've got it, I know what I'm doing. So she just looked at Abby Ward who was the key, saw a little nod, little nod which was the cue, shouted props to Lifter and that was the game.
Speaker 2:Love it.
Speaker 1:So I wasn't quite as efficient as my young intern.
Speaker 2:Whitney.
Speaker 1:Hanson was.
Speaker 2:That's an interesting point around. That little box can be a source of great difference between coaches. What would you say is the ultimate? Is it just personality-wise, because there's some lunatics? I've been around some lunatics in the boxes. I'm studious as well. I like to keep it calm so I can think and be clear in what I'm saying, and I find that I struggle when I've got guys screaming their heads off.
Speaker 1:I'm 20 seconds behind the game so I'm watching the game but also watching. I always put my videos. I've got about five different views. I've got that about 20 seconds behind, so I see what's happening and I can have a go. And I think the other coaches they did their own way, but we were all really good at just keeping calm, giving each other all the information that had come to either me or Wes to pass on to the sideline be chrono down there who'd pass it on, or one of the women who was running the water. So we were pretty good. Yeah, most of the boxes I've been in I coached a long time, obviously with Graham and Steve, pretty analytical, just focusing on what needs to be done. There are a couple of occasions that we're at some high pressure moments and that last 20 minutes of the Tour de l'Ever World Cup I had to move. I always sat on Graeme's left. I had to move back to the water cooler because my ribs were getting bruised with the arms coming out like that.
Speaker 1:I kept getting them to the side, but in general, I've been in boxes that are pretty calm. You've got jobs to do, haven't you? You know that You've got a job you've got to do and you've got to try and find solutions to doing things, and that's the way we operate.
Speaker 2:Love it. Now, mate, just to sort of sum up your thoughts around this cultural piece, around going into the women's team, and I'd love to know with the, with hindsight, looking back a few years on, about like what insight stands out and what advice to any coaches going into a new, brave, new sort of coaching journey for them. Like coaching, you do rotate around a lot and you mix it up and you kind of have to to advance with your experience and knowledge, and particularly around that woman's side of things, what would you say is a key bit of advice based on what you've been through in this experience that you pass on?
Speaker 1:well, not just in this experience. I think in coaching in general, people will rise to a challenge if it's their challenge. So you can't enforce challenges on the players. You know they've got to be co-involved in it. I'm an asker of questions rather than a teller, you know sometimes you've got to give instructions, but often, you know, I'll ask a question. I normally ask a what question? Which is you get a descriptive answer. So what did you do there? Oh, I passed the ball. So what did you see to pass the ball on? The defender came in on me. Would you do it next time? Yeah, for sure. Okay, that's good, and so I tend to operate like that. As I say, I had live video, we'd go to video. So what did you see here about that play? What would you do better? Right, let's go and do that. So, asking what questions? Getting descriptive answers, empowering the players to think for themselves? I think for me that's critical.
Speaker 2:Do you have a responsibility, smitty, with empowering players, because the word's used a lot. You're not just saying it's on you, boys or girls.
Speaker 1:No, no, you need a system of doing it. They're all different ways. Rugby players are all different, even with the All Blacks, with changing, changing cultures, changing ages, changing from baby boomers who I've just basically played with to millennials. You know it's totally different it is right yeah.
Speaker 1:Move with the times and in some cultures you're in, you know, in Japan hard to get a question answered. So even with the All Blacks I've done this, but I did it definitely with Kobe in Japan I'd give each player a red card and a green card and they'd have to come to bring them to our meetings, to our previews, reviews, and whoever was presenting after five minutes would say hold your cards up. And so if they held a red card up, they didn't know, they didn't get big as to what you're saying. If they held a green card up, they got it, and so then you'd get the green cards to explain to the red cards what that was about. And so tried all sorts of things.
Speaker 2:Those are good, yeah, I had dice.
Speaker 1:I had a dice app on my computer where I put players into groups of six and they'd number one, two, three, four, five, six, all around the room and then now and again play the dice. It would come up, say four. So all the number fours in each group would have to explain to the rest of the group what was said by either myself or one of the other coaches or a player that was presenting, and you should have seen the pens and papers come out when that happened, you know. So everyone's making sure they get their notes because they don't want their number to come up. So you've got to try.
Speaker 1:You know, depending on the culture, depending on the stage they're at, you've got to find ways of them learning and retaining the knowledge. You know, often, if you just I learned earlier in my career in Italy, actually, if you just tell them all the time, it goes in one ear and out the other. But if you can get a descriptive answer from them, it'll generally stay in there. And I started seeing in Italy as a player coach started seeing improvement in the players. I was asking questions because I was learning the language and I wanted to be able to converse with them and know what they knew about the game, so that's why I was doing it. But then it became obvious to me these guys are getting better and they're actually learning and staying in there, and so it was just something that I used the rest of my career.
Speaker 2:Mate, that's awesome and I imagine that experience in Italy taught you loads. But that's For sure. Imagine over 17 glasses of red wine.
Speaker 1:you'd be getting better at everything I've never had a red wine before I went there, actually.
Speaker 2:Really. No never, and now, it's a lifetime of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm not a great. I like it, but I couldn't tell one red wine from another. If any of you out there are going to buy me a red wine, it doesn't matter what I wouldn't know. A $100 bottle from a $10 bottle.
Speaker 2:Right, well, keep that in mind, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's just the occasion, isn't it? It's just the occasion With friends I love it.
Speaker 2:I love it. Now, smitty, I'll leave. Thank you, mate, for that rise to the challenge. If it's their challenge, I think that's a good one for culture and it sort of sums up a lot of things about making it personal, drawing that emotion, drawing that mental side. It's sort of a nice phrase to bring it all together. I'd like to finish Samadhi, because I really appreciate your time. Well, this one I'm going to give you a couple of caveats, because this is a question I'd like to finish on is you're not allowed to talk about malls or box kicking, but what do you believe around the game either philosophy or gameplay, whatever you want that you reckon your peers, your contemporaries and others would potentially disagree with? That you believe in at all.
Speaker 1:all as interesting as it could be no boxcats, no mauls because I know I think most coaches that I talk to, about quick ball off scrums rather than playing for penalties, wouldn't agree. You know, most forward coaches want to get that penalty from the scrum, then they can kick it to a line out, then they can have a maul or play off that line out, whereas for me, the closer you are to the opposition, like playing against backs off scrums gives you huge opportunities to hit holes because the defenders have to make quicker decisions. So it's a great place to attack and you know I always use my best attackers in the most vulnerable positions. So, rather than like I can see the point of leaving Portia Woodman or Aisha Linger on the wing, so I bring them into those positions that we're going to attack bring them into those positions that we were going to attack, and we'd have four options off each move that we had.
Speaker 1:We only had three moves from scrums one left side, one midfield and one right side but there were four options. So it's really hard to mark all four options and it's just a matter of learning the players. If they're all running the same line every time, they'll soon learn that they're on a weak shoulder or they're not being marked. Give it to me on the tip next time. Bang through, they go, and that can be the winning or losing of a game. So that's how we operated, but I don't think most coaches today would agree with that.
Speaker 1:You know, they want more structure, they want more detail, they want more detail, they want to set up their plays. So that would be the first thing. Second thing is I want everyone coming forward rather than keeping depth for when they're going to be involved in the play. You know, and I just think if we could have a coaching movement that allowed us to play off scrums rather than have resets, that told us keeping the ball alive and the tackle is a better way to keep the play going rather than set up another ruck, it would be safer as well, because the less rucks you've got in the game, the less chance for us from injury. The more offloads you have, the more fan-centric the game becomes, the more movement there is. And you know, in our game I know our game's for everyone, for all shapes and sizes. Everyone's got a role to play in it, so it doesn't suit every team, but that's what I like to see. I'd be quite keen if I was playing today.
Speaker 1:I'd be very keen on having less subs and fatiguing the props a bit more so they had someone to attack in the last 20 minutes You've got no one to attack today because they'll just bring on another 140kg athlete and they're mobile and quick Mate there's a discrimination case going to be lodged against you if you keep talking like this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 1:I think you know the way I like to see the game, the way I like to coach it. It's probably different. I wouldn't get a lot of buy-in from a lot of coaches. I don't think it's probably different. I wouldn't get a lot of buy-in from a lot of coaches. I don't think. But I feel in our DNA we are innovators. We've used number eight wire to build all sorts of things. My old man replaced a fan belt one day that had broken with my own stocking. That's who we are. We're a pioneering country and I'd like to see us lead the world again in the game and the way it's played. And just because you're doing that doesn't mean you're going to lose, but you could win in a more exciting and hugely entertaining fashion to both the players and the people watching. That's what I'd like to see.
Speaker 2:I love it, mate, very much so, and I think, just in reflection of those words, mate, you are actually a pioneer as well, and you're leaving this game in a way, better place than well, since you've gotten there. You're leaving it in an amazing place, mate, and it's testament to you and everything you do.
Speaker 1:Thank you for your time.
Speaker 2:Smithy, really appreciate it. I love chatting to you. Always walk away feeling like I know rugby a lot better than an hour ago. So thank you, my friend, I really appreciate it. Thanks mate.
Speaker 2:Here are my final three thoughts from a conversation with Wayne. Number one if you haven't got meaning, it's meaningless. Now, for me, that's a powerful statement from Wayne, because he is one of the world's best technical and tactical coach. But for him to say the importance of having a deeper meaning is massive around culture and the importance of that. Our job as coaches is to create the meaning, or at least connect the dots between the rugby and the bigger meaning, of why we are here.
Speaker 2:Number two his statement people will rise to a challenge. If there is a challenge, we as coaches are the challenge setters. So let's not think small, let's get out there and let's think big. Think about things that will connect and ignite the cerebellum of our players' brains. Let's ignite it up, light it up and make it fire with excitement. Number three give them something they will remember, whether that's your team or even your children, your family or your mates, life is about experience, so let's bring that out in everything we do. Let's make that policy for our rugby. Wayne created the joy and the laughter and engagement in his teams and wanted to do things different than he'd done them before and how the Black Ferns had ever done it before. He made it different and then he brought it to life. Until next time, stay safe.