This may have been printed in todays Tele as well but I'll add it since our usual article pasters haven't done it yet
Brian Smith defends changes that revamped Knights' roster
Robert Craddock | April 12, 2008 12:00am
NEWCASTLE coach Brian Smith admits he is a hopeless cook. But he never expected his lack of culinary skills would provide a blueprint to reshape a football club. Smith sent tsunami-sized shock waves through Newcastle's tightly knit rugby league community by cutting 12 of Newcastle's top 25 players last year, including home-town favourites Clint Newton and Josh Perry, as the Knights prepared for life after Andrew Johns.
It was widely thought he was working under a strict mandate from the Newcastle board but Smith yesterday revealed greater prompting came from further down the food chain.
"The mandate actually came from a place most people would not think of," Smith said.
"I spent the first few months in Newcastle on my own. The family had not moved and I am not a cook. I spent plenty of time in cafes and restaurants having breakfast and dinners.
"When you are on your 'Pat Malone' you are fair game for people walking round the place, so they come and sit down and tell you what they want to see. It was quite amazing.
"People were very forthright and there was usually a fair bit of commonality about what they wanted to see . . . a lot of that was about what the Newcastle club stood for when it first came into the competition. There was not a lot of talk about winning.
"The talk from the average Joes was more about wanting to see some toughness from the team and togetherness and playing for each other.
"It suited me just fine . . . I was happy to try and deliver that for the people who were telling me that in their hundreds."
Just as Elton John had Song For Guy, Smith has now delivered his Team for Average Joe.
They may not have the big names and they may yet go belly-up this winter but they have heart and, for the moment at least, are playing for each other.
Two wins and two narrow losses after four rounds have exceeded the early expectations of many pundits, who expected the Knights to be wooden-spoon candidates. They do, however, remain underdogs against Brisbane tomorrow.
So does he feel vindicated?
"In terms of spirit and harmony and getting on together they have been pretty good since day one. It is encouraging," he said.
Smith is one of rugby league's great survivors. Only Tim Sheens (548) and Wayne Bennett (532) have coached more first-grade games than Smith's 485 from 21 seasons.
With three grand final appearances, his sides have been solid but the conspicuous asterisk on his record is the lack of a premiership, particularly as Sheens and Bennett have 10 between them.
He has been a controversial figure, having had famous blow-ups with players such as Gorden Tallis and any number of Newcastle players.
Yet there is also respect and some endearment from players such as former St George centre Mark Coyne, who recently invited Smith to his 40th birthday party where another former Dragon, hooker Trevor Bailey, made a point of telling Smith he greatly admired the bold stance he took at Newcastle.
"I just thought he showed enormous courage and I told him I took my hat off to him," Bailey said.
There have been times when Smith has been attacked ruthlessly in the media over his lack of a premiership and occasionally abrasive ways.
He feels he handles criticism better than he used to and, in stressful times, takes solace in the fact that his challenges are minute compared to the hardships suffered by his parents when they ran cattle farms on the Clarence River outside Grafton.
"As a kid I saw floods and droughts. We all saw things which were totally out of their control. They would wipe out weeks and months and years of toil," he said.
"Watching mum and dad get up and go again and watch the flood waters recede, the cattle come back from the high ground and you start again."
Smith is renowned for his intensity as a coach and a deep understanding of the game. He feels he is a more mellow man and coach than he used to be and concedes there have been times when he has been too passionate for his own good.
There are well-known stories of him sending text messages to players, sometimes late at night, to keep them as driven as he is.
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I didn't know that Smithy was from Grafton originally, that makes another person (Wicks is also from Grafton) that is from the general area where I grew up - there ya go.
