Wayne Smith chats
Pretty bland interview tbh. Probably the most "controversial" bit was his suggestion that Jordie Barrett be given a go at 12...which is not controversial at all really given Barrett grew up playing 12.
The best part was his description of how the Chiefs quickly developed their culture under Rennie - I had no idea they were so under-resourced when he took over.
The best part was his description of how the Chiefs quickly developed their culture under Rennie - I had no idea they were so under-resourced when he took over.
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convoluted
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^^^ Yes, it's a chat, not an analysis. Mostly, he reminisces.
I found it interesting on many levels. Especially that he thinks the All Blacks forwards being second best didn't seem much of an issue to him... it can be fixed (and maybe not how we think ie not by beefing up the tight five), by re-inventing themselves... via the Super franchises and that Foster is good at getting messages across to the five different franchises. So will be interesting to see if this re-invention occurs... and what it looks like...
Was interested to see him say about ABs reinventing themselves too Grandpa, he spoke last year about how Retallick had shed weight and played a more mobile game for his club side in Japan that he coaches.
Anyone who thought he was going to make any controvesial comments etc don't know Wayne Smith, he doesn't tend to try and create headlines.
Anyone who thought he was going to make any controvesial comments etc don't know Wayne Smith, he doesn't tend to try and create headlines.
Yep but as 2 of them not available for the job, don't need to think about it too much.Ymx wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 8:12 pm Imagine having
Robertson
Rennie
Smith
As coaching set up for the ABs. Any of the top 2 as head coach and other assistant would work.
Like saying hell if Jamie Joseph, Joe Schmidt and Tony Brown were available, we caould come up with heaps of combos.
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Guy Smiley
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I've just read through the whole thing and that is the bit that grabbed my attention. It's incredible... a seriously good story on its own.Gumboot wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 4:39 am The best part was his description of how the Chiefs quickly developed their culture under Rennie - I had no idea they were so under-resourced when he took over.
You saw that community building with Dave first hand at the Chiefs.
It was after the 2011 World Cup and I’d really pushed forward Dave Rennie for the job. And he knew I’d pushed him for the job. So he rang me just before the World Cup and said; ‘Thanks very much for pushing me for the Chiefs job. So why don’t you put your money where your mouth is and come and join me?’
I thought, yeah, and joined the Chiefs virtually straight after the World Cup. We’d just been thrown out of the stadium because the Chiefs were hugely in debt and couldn’t pay the council rent. So we ended up at St Paul’s Collegiate. We used the cricket pavilion as our changing room and meeting area and trained on the cricket oval. We had nowhere to go to after that, no plans.
I talked before about Nadal and suffering. We said this is going to be hard, boys. We’ve got no favours here. We had one whiteboard, but it always had the doctor’s stuff on it. You had to find a little corner for your own plans. We had a projector that was cracked. So you couldn’t show anything. There were bags everywhere with guys getting changed. It was hard. It was hard to see any future.
I went to London to coach Southern Hemisphere v the North in a Help the Heroes charity match and when I came back Dave and Andrew Strawbridge and Tom Coventry had scouted an ex meat warehouse at Ruakura Research centre where Tom Coventry’s wonderful (retired) father was a caretaker. And Dave’s got this mind where he can look at things and design things. So we walk in the warehouse and he said, ‘We’ll have a gym down here and a track there and we’ll put the offices up there.’
‘But we’ve got no money.’ we said.
‘Oh, we’ll give the boys Wednesdays off. They can pull the walls down. We’ve got Richard Kahui who’s a builder. Alex Bradley, he’s a plumber. They can run that side of it. And we’ll paint it ourselves.’
So every Wednesday the boys would go and work on the building. We had to be out of St Paul’s Collegiate by the 25th of January. And we moved on the 24th of January into this new place. This was 2012. Stu Williams, who is a great people manager for the Chiefs, was able to find paint. He might have got it from the navy because it was a navy grade like you see on the warships. We painted all the walls. The wives came in, Trish helped. And did a lot of cutting in around the light switches and all of that. It was a real family affair.
Stu opened one of the milking sheds that had been closed down. It was full of furniture. Desks, whiteboards, all of that. The cracked projector was hopeless so we trialled a couple of projectors from retailers. When they wanted the money, the projector would go back to the retailer and we’d try another retailer. The field was an old cricket ground. It didn’t have very good drainage so as soon as it rained we couldn’t really train on it.
No one had cars. We all biked into the centre of the city on Thursday mornings for breakfast. Stu would ring all the clubs and schools and try and find us a ground and then we’d bike to the ground to train.
If that was the situation then, what is the situation now for a lot of the franchises after Covid? How is New Zealand Rugby going to finance itself?
It can’t without something like the Silver Lake deal. They can’t.
But it’s remarkable what you can still achieve without money. We then started the process with the Chiefs logo. We put it up on the wall. So I asked the boys what the logo meant to them. They came up with different things – he looks arrogant, he looks proud.
Liam Messam said, ‘We’re never going to win Super Rugby.’
‘Why not?’
‘Look at Jeff the Māori. Jeff’s got no legs.’
So we gave Jeff legs. Then someone said, ‘let’s not do all the normal culture stuff. Let’s actually write down things about what the culture looks like.’
This was the start of Chiefs mana. A cultural revolution that embraced the settlement of our region by Tainui. It took us to marae, down the mighty Waikato river. We visited historical sites and changed the language of rugby. We used historically significant events to rename our attack, defence and counter attack. As an example, we called our counters Taonga (a treasure) which is significant in te tiriti. We named our mini teams after marae. We replicated many of the customs and values. This whole period with Chiefs was an adventure. We didn’t know where we were going or what came next. It was a pot pourri of ideas from players, coaches and staff that created an outstanding era.
We had no money of course. The place was pretty rough. We had to borrow and steal weights. But we built this huge desire, this huge willingness to suffer and suffer together. We had nothing but we had everything because of how close we were and how we fought for each other.
In our stadium there are ceremonial gates (whatanoa) over the far side of the ground and when you run out through the tunnel there are the carvings on the walls. When we first visited there Dave asked what the carvings meant, what the gates meant. No one knew anything about them.
So we got a local kaumatua (Ora) involved. He explained the significance of the whatanoa. The warriors used to walk under it on the way out to battle. So we thought why don’t we do that. He composed a haka with the players. It included terms and sayings from history. And we used the designs and words on the whatanoa and carvings to feed our game plan.
On a Friday the guys went around our region to talk to schools. Then we had the captain’s run when we got back. That was massive for us. It enhanced our community and it was also good for the boys. After talking to kids about family, bullying and community, you’re going to stand up for your mates when you run onto the field the next day. It was a great lesson to me. Your culture and environment and identity is way more important than the actual coaching. We had a group of players who weren’t superstars but they gave everything to the team. We won back to back titles under all this duress.
Sharing a whiteboard with doctors... was any of this ever talked about at the time? Rags to riches storyline? You'd think it would be a journalistic goldmine when they won that first Super title? Only thing I remember is something about a strip club and girls being abused... though that may have come later after Rennie left?
He didn't even need to be controversial to be interesting though... fascinating on many levels. From the Chief's back to basics building Rome from the ground up... to the All Blacks being the masters of re-invention. Which is true.. but sometimes it takes years of mediocrity to get there. 98 to 2004 and 2007 to 2010 spring to mind. And Foster doesn't feel like the master re-inventor somehow.Dan54 wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 7:07 pm Was interested to see him say about ABs reinventing themselves too Grandpa, he spoke last year about how Retallick had shed weight and played a more mobile game for his club side in Japan that he coaches.
Anyone who thought he was going to make any controvesial comments etc don't know Wayne Smith, he doesn't tend to try and create headlines.
Grandpa wrote: Tue Feb 22, 2022 9:10 amHe didn't even need to be controversial to be interesting though... fascinating on many levels. From the Chief's back to basics building Rome from the ground up... to the All Blacks being the masters of re-invention. Which is true.. but sometimes it takes years of mediocrity to get there. 98 to 2004 and 2007 to 2010 spring to mind. And Foster doesn't feel like the master re-inventor somehow.Dan54 wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 7:07 pm Was interested to see him say about ABs reinventing themselves too Grandpa, he spoke last year about how Retallick had shed weight and played a more mobile game for his club side in Japan that he coaches.
Anyone who thought he was going to make any controvesial comments etc don't know Wayne Smith, he doesn't tend to try and create headlines.
