Brian Smith's humiliation of his captain
Article from:
August 10, 2007
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22219383-5001023,00.html
THE full transcript of Newcastle coach Brian Smith's press conference yesterday.
Q: Any comments that you'd like to make regarding what has been said regarding discontent among the players?
A: If you want to go somewhere and find a bad news story, go to a place of employment where there are a whole heap of people who have been long-term employees and care about where they work and have just been told their services are no longer required. That ain't too hard.
And if you really want to find someone who is sad, find the captain of a footy club who's only played 11 games this season for his club through suspension and injury and rep duties and who's seen his club not do as well as he would have liked under his captaincy.
I feel very sorry for and I'm upset about . . . that there's a number of guys in this footy club who I've only known for a short time who I really like who are not going to be here next year. So I can't imagine how hard that is for blokes who are friends of those people and who have done all the stuff that footy players do together and they're losing their teammates. It's sad but . . . they all know change needs to be made. That's why I was brought here. The board gave me a clear statement of what they wanted done and while it's not a happy job . . . if you want to be happy, then you're hiring. If you want to be sad then you're firing. It's tough.
Q: Is it disappointing that it's been played out so publicly?
A: I think Danny could have done it in a different way but like I said, if you want to find someone who's not at the top of their game and is going to make an error of judgement, then you go to someone who is suffering from severe disappointment. Danny's a real proud man. He wanted to have an enormous effect and he has. He's just not seeing and feeling that as the new captain of the Knights after Joey left. He wanted to be an effective and winning captain of the Origin series and it didn't turn out that way. His position as No. 9 in the Australian jersey is probably under threat. For a proud guy who's done so much service for Australian footy, and particularly the Knights, when it's not going well you're likely to find a bloke who is going to say the wrong thing. I wish he hadn't said it. I'm sure he does too but them's the breaks.
Q: What can you do about team morale or what are you hoping to do before the weekend?
A: Team morale's not so bad, really. It depends if you're talking Monday or Tuesday after a loss. Everybody's feeling it. But if you'd been here and seen our training session the other night - and Simmo summed it up in the end by saying 'that's one of our best sessions for the year' - you wouldn't worry so much.
Bedsy wasn't here to see that. Bedsy's missed a lot of sessions this year because he's not been part of the team. Only playing 11 games has made it difficult for him to feel like he's part of that crew at times.
Q: You're playing on Friday night. How do you get the boys to focus on the game rather than what's going on in the media?
A: You guys focus on that more than we do. We're used to the fish and chip wrapper thing. We understand that you've got a job to do and most of what you have to do is about talking to get people's attention. If you want to go and see all the cars that go past on the road over there, not one of them makes news. But if two of them bang together, you guys will have a camera there and someone will make a story out of it. That's the nature of what you do compared to what we do.
Q: It must be heartening to know you have the support of the administration, Steve Crowe and the CEO.
A: Absolutely but that's never been in doubt. Those people, I work with them as well as for them.
I'm the one at the coalface who makes the decisions but the big decisions about the change that needed to take place were not made by me.
The people who are part of that change are recommendations made by me but the fact that things needed to change - everyone knew Andrew wasn't going to be here, whether it was this year or next year - was as obvious as anything could possibly be.
I'm feeling pretty good about the fact we've brought a whole truckload of young blokes through this year.
Some have played way too many games because of the injury toll that we've had but ...
Q: Is it disappointing that blokes who have seemed willing to criticise you in the paper don't seem willing to put their name to the criticism?
A: I never take any notice of any journalist who offers something up that's got no name attached to it.
As far as I'm concerned, that's him saying that and I think most people in the community have got no respect for journalists who do that stuff.
Q: Do you doubt whether those comments were actually made by players?
A: I don't care. They're irrelevant really. The issues for me are dealing with the guys day-to-day and sometimes when they get bad news, they're not going to feel happy. They're just like you and me.
Q: Do you get the feeling that, the papers are saying that a lot of the players are saying they don't want to be at training anymore, they don't want to be here anymore, do you feel that?
A: I feel like that on Mondays and Tuesdays often when we're losing. That's a natural feeling for everybody. Put on top of that that some of them know they're not going to be here next year and it's a very empty, lonely feeling.
It's not easy to deal with.
These guys are pretty good at dealing with it.
Brian Smith 
