New All Blacks coach has worked for three years to ‘get rid’ of Wayne Smith’s ‘mantra’
Wayne Smith and an inset of Mike Blair.
New All Blacks attack coach Mike Blair says that he has worked hard to change the mindset of Kobe players after Sir Wayne Smith’s success at the club.
Smith has a long association with the Japan Rugby League One club and was a director/manager at the team when they last won the top division in Japan back in 2019 – when the tournament was the Top League.
The former All Blacks assistant, who obviously had a big say on the team’s attacking structures, had Dan Carter running the show that season and the fly-half was named MVP.
The club now looks on track to possibly end their trophy drought this season under Dave Rennie’s tutelage before he takes on the All Blacks head coaching job, and Blair has been by his side since the ex-Wallabies boss joined Kobe in 2023.
Getting rid of Wayne Smith’s rule
While Smith would have laid a strong foundation for Blair and Rennie to build upon, the Scotsman has revealed that one rule that the attack guru instilled has been a real challenge to overcome and taken almost his entire stint at the Kobelco Kobe Steelers to get rid of.
He disclosed as much as he detailed the difficulty of coaching in Japan as he has had to alter his approach with the players’ skillset differing from that of those in Scotland.
“A big part of our game is how we can structure the defence. So, we talk about turnover ball, creating counter-attacking ball and to do that, you need good jacklers or a defence that’s able to force errors. But equally, you’ve got to kick to the opposition to get them to kick back to you so that you find the unstructured defence as well,” Blair explained on Aotearoa Rugby Podcast.
“Wayne Smith coached Kobe in 2018/19, I think, when Kobe last won it, and he had a rule that if nines box kicked, then they didn’t play the following week.
“So, I’ve been trying to get rid of that kind of mantra a little bit to make them understand that you’ve got to kick to the opposition to get them to kick back, then break up a defence. That has probably taken almost a whole three years to do that because there has been a resistance to that because Kobe rugby is offloading, playing from your own line, the only kicking that you do would be attacking kicking.
“So that change of philosophy has been difficult, but for me, one of the most interesting parts of being an attack coach or understanding the whole game is understanding the players that you’ve got as well and what suits the players that you’ve got.
“So for the first year, we had a lighter pack, so we’re able to move the ball around more. Our super strength this year is more the back five, our scrum and our centres. Actually being able to win the gain line and get lightning-quick ball, and then staying on top of the opposition has been more the focus this year.”
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Eye-opening Japan experience
Prior to taking on the attack coach job at Kobe, Blair’s only coaching experience came in Scotland, working with Rennie at Glasgow Warriors and he had a stint as an assistant coach with the national team before taking on the Edinburgh head coach position.
He explained that he wanted to get out of his comfort zone by moving to Japan and that’s precisely what occurred as he was forced to alter his approach as his tactics and plans that worked in the UK didn’t at Kobe.
“It’s been brilliant. It’s been a real eye-opener for me. Coming across to Japan, not really knowing any of the players, only knowing a couple of the coaches, I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and try something different, and it’s been that the things that I did with Edinburgh which were successful, I tried over here in the first few weeks and they didn’t work because defences were so different,” he added.
“Defences will be stronger in the UK and URC, but sometimes the defences were harder to play against because you couldn’t predict them. So you’d have some players shooting out of line, other guys sitting. So, in terms of planning for how to break something down, it was actually really difficult.
“I had to change my philosophy a little bit around that and work on basic skills, what to do against certain defences, and how to break that down. The league is a better place to be an attack coach than a defence coach.”
