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Smith takes up French coaching role
By Online Editors
Just seven weeks after retiring, former All Black centre Conrad Smith has already taken up a coaching job at French club Pau.
Smith, who played 94 Tests at centre for the All Blacks, 43 games for Wellington, 126 games for the Hurricanes and 52 for Pau, has joined the coaching staff of his French club Pau, where former All Blacks Colin Slade, Tom Taylor, Frank Halai, Jamie Mackintosh and Benson Stanley are in the club squad.
Smith told French rugby newspaper Midi Olympique that as soon as he had played his last game he cut off the weight training but was still running because he enjoyed that.
“I always like to run and even if I stop the rugby I am still very active,” he said.
Smith said during his offseason he had reflected on what he wanted to do and had discussions with players and other coaches in Europe and New Zealand and opted for the defence coaching role with the club.
“I have been thinking about what we can change, what other teams are doing well, what we can imitate, or adapt, to suit us. In rugby, there is never only one way to do things. A defensive system may suit one team but not another and because of that it is important to observe, understand and adapt,” he said.
The former Hurricanes captain also revealed he will be using his French to get the message across.
“I want to coach in French. It is necessary to do that. It is important to me to speak the local language. We are a French club and I want to speak French,” he said.
Club coach, and former All Black, Simon Mannix said while the club would lose a player they would welcome his contribution to the coaching panel which also includes Smith’s 2007 World Cup team-mate Carl Hayman.
“His strictness and his knowledge of the game would help our young players.
“For the past three years, he has been very involved in the club’s progression. He will be missed on the field because he is irreplaceable but he will bring us a lot technically. I’m looking forward to having him on our staff and I am sure he will develop into a great coach,” Mannix said.
Source: @AllBlacks
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Stephen Larkham, Mick Byrne, Scott Wisental, Ben Mowen, Les Kiss, Jim McKay, Rod Kafer.
There are plenty of great Australian coaches who could do a better job than Schmidt.
Go to commentsThis piece is nothing more than the result of revisionist fancy of Northern Hemisphere rugby fans. Seeing what they want to see, helped but some surprisingly good results and a desire to get excited about doing something well.
I went back through the 6N highlights and sure enough in every English win I remembered seeing these exact holes on the inside, that are supposedly the fallout out of a Felix Jones system breaking down in the hands of some replacement. Every time the commentators mentioned England being targeted up the seam/around the ruck or whatever. Each game had a try scored on the inside of the blitz, no doubt it was a theme throughout all of their games. Will Jordan specifically says that Holland had design that move to target space he saw during their home series win.
Well I'm here to tell you they were the same holes in a Felix Jones system being built as well. This woe is now sentiment has got to stop. The game is on a high, these games have been fantastic! It is Englands attack that has seen their stocks increase this year, and no doubt that is what SB told him was the teams priority. Or it's simply science, with Englands elite players having worked towards a new player welfare and management system, as part of new partnership with the ERU, that's dictating what the players can and can't put their bodies through.
The only bit of truth in this article is that Felix is not there to work on fixing his defence. England threw away another good chance of winning in the weekend when they froze all enterprise under pressure when no longer playing attacking footy for the second half. That mindset helped (or not helped if you like) of course by all this knee jerk, red brained criticism.
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