The Brian Smith Appreciation Thread

Yeah, he is starting to look a bit like Bush.

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Smith puts the new in Newcastle
By Chico Harlan | March 22, 2008 12:00am


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New broom ... Brian Smith at Newcastle training. Photograph: Robert McKell / The Daily Telegraph

MY first encounter with Brian Smith - or rather, my first 172 encounters, give or take - came via this newspaper's archives, wherein Smith's first season with the Newcastle Knights is concisely catalogued as a disaster.

Turns out that last footy season, Smith's name - like horoscopes and weather forecasts - appeared in our newspaper just about every day.

You could find the latest turmoil most often under the blackness of screaming headlines, thunderclouds created by the anonymous players questioning his tactics or the departing players threatening legal action or the letter-writing fans demanding his departure.

Another story mentioned (to my relief, frankly) that Smith never read the newspapers, this one included. Evidently, preservation of his sanity depended on it.

My circumstances, of course, prompted the reading of every word. So that's what I did this Wednesday, a day prior to my meeting Smith at the Newcastle facilities. And the two side-effects of all this reading?

Most predictably, I felt a touch sorry for the guy.

His 9-15 start in Newcastle doubled as the modern-century equivalent of a public stoning - the recap of which I had just swallowed in an hour of heavy reading.

But more important, I also felt a wave of admiration. The main outrage against Smith, after all, stemmed from his willingness to make wholesale change. He'd overhauled half the Knights' roster, complaints be damned.

All of this meant that Smith, on account of either confidence or courage, never allowed the sentiment of those around him to influence his own conviction.

When I finally encountered Smith in person the Knights had just wrapped up the day's training in a wood-mirror studio you'd normally associate with yoga. He stood, arms folded, joking with a few players as they filed out the door.

Soon it was just the two of us, and we walked down a corridor, past a small team poster ("Bad luck is sometimes part of the game", it read. "Get over it".) and into a weight room. We sat on abutting free weight machines and there, for almost the next hour, we talked about change.

The coaches who change best win premierships, win love and maybe write books. Smith knows this, because he reads them. His library of coaching literature influences his own confidence to rearrange a team.

Once Smith learns I'm from the US (which requires one or two sentences from my mouth) he relays a story about the late Bill Walsh, a renowned American football coach, perhaps the first who styled himself more as a professor than a general.

Smith's voice drifted, for just a half-beat, into wonder. For the rest of our sit-down, Smith described in detail the pains and importance of the previous year.

"Was there anybody you just straight-up ran off the team?" I asked him.

"No," he responded. "None."

He said he didn't blame himself for any of the "political turmoil". He said anybody who failed to recognise the need for change, especially following Andrew Johns' departure, was living in a "false world". He said he felt he needed to win to retain his job. "Yes, always," he said.

"You said you never read the paper," I finally mentioned. "True?"

"Oh, not never," Smith said. "But I can't remember buying one for a decade. I do see what's written."

"So you make a special effort to ignore what's being said?"

"Look, it's not productive," Smith said. "Especially when you're in the business of trying to get the best out of yourself and others, it makes no sense to be prodding yourself with negativity."
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Headline is gold, and so true as well.

I'll admit that Smith has done an awesome job preparing for the post-Johns era, and something that he may not have been expecting only 3 games into his first season with us.
 
Hat off to Smith with his efforts so far.

I have to admit I had my doubts over him, but somehow he has this team drilled in so well to stay cool late in the game to come from behind and win.

5/5 in the trials and 2/2 regular season so far, very nice!(borat)
 
Smithy is going so well with this knights team considering all the new players

I thought it would take a while to win a few games so i was going to be patient with them...but now I am too excited

everyone was tipping us to finish out of the 8 :p

anyway I like how our team has gotten fitter and stronger under smith

we can storm home over opposition sides now(last nights game and the 2 trial matches)

Luv you Smithy :D
 
Comon guys, this happened last year and look where we ended up finishing, im not saying we will again. Lets just hope we can get our full strength side on the field, and keep performing consistantly through the year
 
I hope our team doesn't get complacent, hopefully they take each game as it comes and not even worry about previous wins just focus on the week ahead.

Hopefully Smith puts Vuna under some extensive training this week.
 
Oh ok, James. That explains why Graeme Hughes is commentating in it (since he was calling games in NZ at the time). He must have either taken this from a highlights video, or must have heaps of old games, and extrapolated bits and pieces of certain matches.
 
Awesome video, reminded me of how great Brett Mullins was at fullback fro Canberra during the 90's.
 
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