Wayne Smith Back As Northampton's Coach

Wayne Smith could have been excused if, as a result of the 1999 World Cup, he had developed an insurmountable aversion to rugby in England. He was assistant coach and video analyst for John Hart, the man in charge of the New Zealand team that suffered that remarkable semi-final defeat against unfancied France at Twickenham three years ago.

Smith is back, though, coaching Northampton, who travel to play Cardiff in the Heineken Cup this afternoon. And he ever so slightly bristles at the suggestion that he returned to England to prove something to himself - and to the English - after that Twickenham catastrophe, a word that comes nowhere near overstating the impact the France defeat (43-31 after holding a 14-point lead) had in New Zealand.

'There's a hole in the gut as a New Zealander that the All Blacks didn't win,' he says, 'and I was there as an analyst so I was a part of it. But it's not something I go to bed at night having nightmares about and I don't feel I've anything to prove. That's not why I'm here. This is a team game. It's not about me - it's about helping the players to fulfil their potential and that's what I'm trying to do at Northampton.'

The man who made 35 appearances at fly-half for the All Blacks in the early 1980s, and took over from Hart as head coach after the last World Cup, arrived at Franklin's Gardens last season.

'I researched things really well when I had the opportunity to come here and I liked what I saw,' he says. 'This club has a great history and it's got a lot of people here who care about its history - and what the club stands for. I don't think I could be in a better place.'

He made an immediate impact both on and off the pitch. He knows the force of language and recites passages of Shakespeare and tales about the deeds of Maori warriors to give potency to his team talks. With journalists, he likes to work on his phrase-making, once remarking, 'We trained like Tarzan and played like Jane,' and on another occasion, before a difficult away match, observing, 'We will be performance-orientated, not outcome-orientated.'

He's not just a wordsmith, though, and soon turned Northampton's fortunes around. Now, after a mixed start to the 2002-03 season, which includes that unique twenty-first-century feat of winning a league game at Welford Road - 'Smith outsmarts Leicester' read one headline - the emphasis is firmly on the Heineken Cup this weekend, with victory in Cardiff this afternoon imperative for the Saints if they are to advance beyond the first pool stage.

The Cardiff game is the first of the three return matches in Pool 6, which Northampton lead while having the same points as Biarritz and Ulster. 'The fact is that each of these games is the final for us,' says Smith. 'We've no other choice. We have to win them all.' He believes the win over Cardiff last weekend, which eliminated the Welsh side, will be of no consequence today. 'Just seeing what David Young has done to Cardiff in terms of character, I know they'll be all out to win it.'

Regular Northampton watchers report that one of the main features of Smith's Northampton is the way he has engaged the backs, turning them into a team who remain admired - and feared - for their forward play but are as equally effective outside the scrum. The key figure in this is the former England fly-half Paul Grayson, who seems to have been renewed by Smith's coaching. Smith, 45, says that he has worked with Grayson, 'but you can't do anything with anyone if they don't want to do it and he's highly motivated.

He's certainly one of the best fly-halfs in Europe. Everyone knows how great he is as a tactician and a kicker, and he's worked hard on a different part of his game, getting flatter so that he's more of a threat with the ball in hand. Without this the rest of your backs have a pretty tough time of it.'

Smith's desire to do well in the Heineken Cup is helped by his admiration for the competition, which he regards as being 'definitely as good - quality-wise and playing-wise - as the Super 12 [the southern hemisphere's equivalent]'.

The harder grounds that Super 12 matches are played on may produce more running rugby, he says, 'but I don't think they've got the forward drive or toughness up front that teams here do and so there are pluses and minuses playing the different types of rugby'. Wayne Smith is clearly too deeply steeped in rugby to have an aversion to playing it anywhere.

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