Jamie Lyall & Harry Jones on What Makes Franco Smith such a Great Coach | Lekker Rugby Pod

And then you look at Kyle Steyn and it's everything a modern winger needs to do, he does. Everything, to an exceptional standard. He's not as big as Doohan, but he's pretty big. He's a big oak. He's not as fast as Doohan, but he ain't slow.

He's better in the air than Doohan. He's a much better defender, and he's got much better ball skills in terms of catch, pass, kicking, positional awareness, and he's a leader. He's the guy who's captain Glasgow to the Scottish rugby's second professional title in history in 30 odd years of pro slash inter-district rugby. I can't think of many teams that have gone to Loftus ever, like literally ever, and been as physically oppressive and supreme as Glasgow were. So there's a whole load of bits to why Franco has been successful.

And a lot of it is, I think, the mindset he's instilled. And that's why people want him for Scotland, because he's proven he can win things. And he referred to himself as a dream giver, which I thought was a beautiful summation. in a way, only a couple of degrees from what you were talking about there, Harry, around having that life force and that believability. You know, there's something intangible with these guys that are really successful where you're right, they think about the game a different way.

This is the Lekker Rugby Pod, only on Megaphone Rugby. I suppose, and this is just my guess now, that you have become hopelessly besotted with African rugby, not just from afar, but because of all the South Africans that have made their way to Scotland. So kind of take us through the journey of how this relationship has been for you. Of course, yeah. I mean, I think more recently it was cemented by our trip to South Africa about 18 months ago for my 30th birthday, which my amazing fiancée planned for myself, my, at the time, seven-year-old steps on her.

but back in the day it would have been first of all watching the old Super 12 I was kind of young enough to have caught the tail end of Super 12 when it was on Sky and when my parents finally got Sky Sports in the house, we grew up in quite a not remote but quite a rural part of Scotland where the internet, you couldn't be on the phone and on the internet at the one time it was almost like the Scottish countryside version of load shedding I suppose you couldn't do the two things at the one time otherwise you'd get the bee-bee-bee-bee and your mum would go, who's on the internet, I'm trying to phone Moira next door or whoever so we would watch that and I mean I remember watching I still remember watching this is probably my high school years but I remember watching Habana going under the posts in that crazy super rugby final to deny the Sharks a first and only title and John Schmidt on the sidelines with his head in his hands and yeah Envy is celebrating in the background and Jakob Vannevest Hazen on the poles I'm sure he was up on the crossbar, things like that and then just being really you were interested in this rugby culture, you would see, I wanted to be a pro player, but I wasn't good enough, nowhere near good enough. And the school games that I played in when I was younger, if you weren't playing a boarding school or a private school, you'd have parents watching, maybe a couple of the adult players that were going on to play for the first team later on that day, a few dog walkers that happened to have stumbled upon a rugby match and gone, oh, watch this for a bit, and probably left their dog's waist behind them. And that was it. if you played a boarding school and you were under 18, you'd maybe have 100 people there, maybe, maybe 200, because the boarding school would get let out to come and watch the first team play at under-18s level. But apart from that, nothing.

And then you watch, you know, Paul Ruiz and the two Parle schools and these, you know, obviously the two great colleges and these powerhouse Springbok factories, and you go, my goodness, they're getting more people watching them than most professional teams do here. some of these inter-schools games they'll get bigger crowds than Edinburgh and Glasgow do Glasgow was the URC champions two years ago and if you had a a power boys, power hymn game you've probably got more people watching that in the stadium than you do watching Glasgow in a home semi-finals it's remarkable I was always fascinated by that love of the game I think the style and the traditional strengths of African rugby appealed to me a lot And then as you get older, you learn more about, I was born November 93, so I wasn't obviously conscious of what was going on in South Africa around that time. But you learn more about 95 and Mandela and the importance of the Springbok emblem and preserving that. And I've always been really interested in that side of it because rugby is such a huge part of your culture over there. And then laterally, you do this job and you just get to know so many South Africans.

because as we'll come on to talk about, I mean, you struggle to think of a successful team in the professional era that hasn't had two, three, four South Africans. I mean, the most recent Toulouse team, because they're so stacked with French guys and a couple of Italians, I don't know, Scott now, maybe one example, but going back to Saracens' team, it's had a heavy South African influence. Bordeaux have Van Rensburg and Saadi and others before that. all these teams, there are always South African players at the top teams when Exeter finally took that step they had Zimbabwean influence they had Jacques Vermeulen more recently they had Phenomenal Janis Kirsten who went back to the Bulls in there, there's always been this real strong footprint of South African players so you just get to know a little bit about the country and you become more interested in it and then the societal piece and the nature piece as well I think because of my background in an interest in animals, we're an animal mad family and I think that's why it was so important to actually get there and to be like, well we're here and we're on safari and we're seeing all these things I've always had a real affinity from afar and then the more you get to know people people like Pierre Schumann, Kyle Steyn up here, who have bought in wholeheartedly to what it means to be Scottish without losing the pride in where they're from, what their identity he is and where they grew up. It's quite a compelling mix, I think.

And I think most struggling rugby teams who maybe haven't got loads of cash, you do an awful lot worse than going to the Curry Cup and going, I'm going to sign four or five top players from here or the Varsity Cup or whatever. And guys who aren't necessarily starring, like let's look at Xandri Rudolf, for example. Most people up here would not have heard of him prior to this season. Now he is killing it in the URC. If he'd signed for, in fact, give me a better example, Marnus van de Merwe at the Scarlets.

Most Scarlets fans wouldn't have known who that is. Boan Fenter, most Edinburgh fans would never have heard of Boan Fenter from the Cheetahs coming to play in Scotland. Now we're all gutted that he's a Springbok. Not for him, it's amazing he's a Springbok and he thoroughly deserves it. But a lot of Scotland fans would, fuck, we could have done with him in a navy blue jersey, not a green and gold one with a bokeh on his chest.

So, yeah, I think there's just such a strong South African influence, whether it's coaching level or playing level, it's so many clubs and international teams to a degree that it's kind of hard not to be interested in it. And then you look at what's happened now where the global thought leader in rugby is a South African, the most disruptive and trend-setting influence of the past, probably the past decade, maybe since of Wayne Smith or someone like that, is Rassi. The best defence coach, maybe barring Sean Edwards, you can argue the toss on that, is a South African. Multiple title winning coaches, obviously Franco Smith here and Sean Everett at Edinburgh, South Africans. So there's a huge influence around that and a very long-winded way of saying, kind of been immersed in it from afar and then really got into it through my career and actually getting to, I suppose, to touch the grass in South Africa and get, even just for a couple of weeks, I'm not going to pretend I'm an expert on your country or anything like that, but just to actually physically see it and smell it and touch it was really, really resonant, I think, for me and for us as a family.

And I've always really found that an affinity with South African people as well. You talk to the guys, there's no bullshit around it. I mean, you want to talk to a player here, there's probably a few layers of communications people you've got to go through. Most of them are very helpful and very easy to facilitate. Sometimes the player can be guarded, depends.

Sometimes they've had quite a, let's say, a sheltered upbringing. And, of course, some of the guys that have come from wealthy families in South Africa and gated communities and amazing schools from day one, but plenty of them haven't. And I think there's that rich tapestry of all different backgrounds, languages, cultures, ethnicities that bring the Springboks together and bring a nation together, not to sound too cheesy. and they're just great guys to talk to they're not guarded in the way that a lot of athletes are I find whether it's Sierkulisi or Yeban Ezebeth and they might have a more carefully curated image because they are so high profile or whether it's someone who is an incredible player but hasn't had maybe the same attention like Varner Koch or Carlos Saadi who I've interviewed recently so yeah I really find a strong affinity with South African rugby and a lot of South Africans in general, if that answers your question, in about half an hour. Well, that's what BBC trains you to do when you're a commentator, is you must take the stage and not be afraid.

I'm interested to hear about that odyssey that you and your family had through on the garden route and all through maybe on safari. But it occurs to me as you were speaking, I was listening to this and thinking, I kind understand why south africans feel at home in scotland and it and in my time there what i observed and you'll say you'll tell me i'm wrong or not is there's a curious mixture in scotland of the formality and the informality people are very blunt as well and they don't like people having too much airs and fuss yes so i met a guy it was a lifelong dream he's not doing too well he's been a cricketer cape town boy kicked a cricketer in in england for for most of his life now but he wanted to play on st andrews and so we we didn't have a booking so we just snuck on at night and we had the hotel there you know we're walking around and everyone's walking their dogs and they're just pooing in the sacred bunkers i mean i i had this very weird picture of st andrews that it was holy sacred ground people are barefoot walking on the beach taking their dogs um people they don't like you to have too many um too many airs up in scotland is my impression the second second thing is they like to eat and they like to get in and get stuck into real food um and the final thing that i drew from Scotland this is from the style of sky is intergenerational fun i was in a pub and there was a granny dancing with a dog and a little girl and there was people with the fiddles and the pipes and everything and you know they were outside inside it just seems very like a braai but it's in a bar yeah yeah is that your impression is as how perry and uh and two hon and all these guys kyle are fitting in so well i think so mate i think that's a totally fair assessment of of some tennis of scottish culture you can't be too big for your breeks here that's what we say too big for your boots effectively breeks means trousers or boxers to be more um grotesque but you you can't have ideas above your station here um sometimes that's an i mean it in england wants to break in so bad if you're coming what's the word what's the word for for for jamie wait you're on mute no this is this is afrikaans uh uh tutorial by mv for you right i forgot to unmute myself yeah it's don't be vent heart jamie that's the click okay and something else i picked up by the way you pronounce my name absolutely perfectly which is very unusual so well done on that oh thank you yeah so by dunky i should say i just imagine a hole full of air you know vinhardt is talking about the too much hot air so you're what you're saying is that scotland i see the translation yeah no i think like you can't really get away with that here especially in glasgow um i'm not from glasgow originally but i've lived most of my adult life here and to study and work and my missus and her family are all from here you you can't uh as i say get ideas above your station here because there will be someone normally one of the smallest men in the the room will cut you down either verbally or physically and be like no no no i had a friend um this might resonate with you harry the really good friend of mine from south carolina who came over here to do the the vet degree and because our universities are i mean obviously it's an old country and in terms of when these institutions were founded and glasgow you name and it looks like hogwarts and it's i mean it's it's it predates columbus in the usa and blah blah all the founding fathers all that sort of stuff so it's an experience for them to come here and they can travel Europe and everything else and we're that old we're all the units here are accredited by the American Association so they can go back do a qualifying exam and go straight and they don't have to go and do another course and he was over and he was I don't go into stereotypes but he would have been quite a loud brash type A personality he was always oh my god oh my god and you could just see if you're in a pub or you know a cubicle of a toilet or something or or queuing to get into a nightclub and he's just talking maybe just a few decibels louder than most people around him and the accent and the kind of, he's quite a big guy and he actually looked like Zach Galifianakis with the beard and the Alan from the Hangover kind of vibe. And you could see a few people being like, what the fuck, what's wrong with this guy doing? Who does this guy think he is? Now part of that is quite good because you can't get too full of yourself somebody will pop your ego very quickly that's the culture here the negative side of that and i think it's more of a pan british thing than a scottish thing specifically is the old top oppi syndrome so you see it now if i can use a rugby example with henry pollock yeah the old guard and the salmon colored chinos and the barber jackets no no no that's not the values of the game no no no celebrate with dignity back in my day yada yada yada and we're sort of as a colleague and friend of mind says we're choking on rugby values sometimes so there's there's almost like the tall poppy syndrome of oh you're a bit different you're you're doing something good let's just chop you right back down again and that's not such a scottish trait per se um i think we you would have seen it with lewis capaldi at glastonbury where he he suffers from tourettes um and it kind of he had an onset of that later in his in his life into his 20s and a couple of years ago glastonbury he couldn't perform a song he was he was ticking and he was choking up and the crowd finished it for him, he took a break from singing, he came back two years later and sung the same song perfectly without any assistance and he'd done documentaries and Netflix and all on and Scotland really rallied around him as a nation and protected him and you see that a lot with our heroes who'd be fiercely loyal and fiercely protective of people who try and degrade or belittle or look down on us and that's probably a very long-lasting historical hangover from being the little sibling to England and the oppression and the you know William Wallace and Robert the Bruce and all that stuff that we not go into on this podcast and but yeah I yeah I think your assessment is pretty accurate And there is definitely that intergenerational stuff partly because it a small country If you live in Scotland, the chances are you don't live that far away from your grandparents.

Do you know what I mean? My in-laws are eight minutes down the road. We see them all the time. They have an amazing relationship with my stepson, their grandson. He has sleepovers at their place.

We go out as a family. We didn't take him to South Africa, but they came with us on holiday to Japan in August. just a few months ago. So there's a real geographical closeness as well which assists that. And yeah, I think we're quite a vibrant, wee country.

There's a lot to do despite the fact there's not a lot of space in which to do it. There's only 5 million of us here, 5.5 I think at the moment. But we've got beautiful mountains, beaches, scenery and I think the South African guys whether they come from a city background or farming background or more rural background. Pierre Skouman is from Nelspre.

But he would have spent a lot of time over in Mozambique and things on his holidays, which I know is really common for guys who live up there. He finds a lot of parallels, weirdly, with that and the nature side and the mountains and the hikes you can go on. I went to interview him once, and he was kind of bemoaning the fact there wasn't any real dangerous wildlife here. He was like, I'm not going to do his accent because it would be grossly offensive to envy it to yourself and to the rest of the listeners, but he was talking about, he had his hand up and he was mimicking how a Cape Cobra strikes and how there was a nest of them on his in-laws' property and they had to go and break the nest. And he was like, but if you break the nest, they just make another nest and they come back.

And he was like, sometimes I just wish, I leave the window open and I just wish a bee would fly in or something just to have some kind of wildlife to look at. So, yeah, we don't have any big animals at all, apart from deer here. we have the red deer which is probably about two thirds the size of a kudu I guess and that's about it so he was decrying the lack of dangerous wildlife but as a rule weather aside the guys really enjoy it here and listen they obviously get well paid to be here as well because the exchange rate between the Rand and the Sterling is pretty good if you're going back that way but yeah I think it's quite it's a strange one because there's only two pro teams but I think they're well set up to receive the right number and the right type of overseas signing, and that's been proven over the years, and South Africans certainly have fit that mould. There is wildlife, though. It's a Royal Mile that you go, you wind your way through Edinburgh to the castle.

A friend of mine were walking up there, and he and I were just crawling from pub to pub, and this group of hens out on the prowl. just yanked both of our shorts down and there we were just bare bucks naked walking the royal mile so there's wildlife in scotland and they're and they're scottish women there's gerard butler too um now listen i i i i'm interested about the influence so right now with so much south african influence in scotland how do you see it has it changed style of game has it what have they brought besides them fitting in, what do you feel like Schoolman and Duhan and Kyle and Franco and all these guys have done to shift some of the rugby in Scotland? Well, they've all brought points of difference. So historically, there was a very aggressive recruitment policy from Scottish rugby to go after guys who were not capped but could be within the three-year period. Obviously, that's shifted to five years now.

So now it's guys who have ancestry, as Kyle Steyn does. Doohan and Pierre do not have Scottish ancestry but qualified on residency Kyle Stane does I'm trying to think of notable others who do Josh McKay, New Zealander, does not but his five years are up quite soon and the form he's been in there's every chance he'll be capped he's young enough that it's probably a worthwhile exercise if Gregor or the next coach want to do it but they've all brought points of difference so Pierre Schumann's point of difference would be twofold. One, work rate ball carrying, and obviously what he does in the set piece, but he gets through so much the hard yards. And we do not have the physical profile of typically, I'm generalising massively, we don't produce players as big and nasty as South Africa does. We just don't.

We don't have that genetic makeup by and large. So, if you're going to fill a gap in your player pool and it's size you want, where are you going to look? There wouldn't be too many guys with Scottish grannies running around in the islands of Tonga, Sioni Tuipilotu being an example, an exception to that. So where are you going to look? Well, South Africa is not a bad place to start if you want big athletes who are hard, raised on a diet of rugby and can rattle some cages and break some tackles.

And we've certainly benefited from that when you look at what Doohan can do. There are very few wingers in the world who have his physical makeup up and his attributes he's kind of had to learn i don't mean to be disparaging about him at all but he's kind of had to learn the nuances of actually being a rugby player versus being an athlete when he came over he was very raw he'd been in the monperie academy not really played he'd had quite serious injuries and actually the the medical advice was not to sign him and richard cockerel who was coaching edinburgh at the time pushed it through and said no no no we're going to sign this guy so they all bring points of difference duhan's attacking prowess has been massive for Scotland over the years. Curiously, I don't think he enjoys playing against certain nations, including South Africa. I think he gets it tight from the Springboks boys, and he's had absolutely no joy at all against Cheslin Colby, currently Aronsa, maybe the two that he's played against most often on that side of the pitch. He wouldn't have gone up against Mapimpy because they both play left wing, but he doesn't, I don't think he really enjoys it.

I've heard that anecdotally, I don't know if it's true, but I don't think it's really his bag because he knows he can't bully these guys. Whereas his style of play suits England, who are not great edge defenders over the past few years. And he'll steamroll guys. And he's been awesome for us. But I'm interested to see where his career takes him next because he's got a bit of catching up to do once he gets back from his ankle injury.

And then you look at Kyle Steyn and it's everything a modern winger needs to do. he does everything to an exceptional standard. He's not as big as Doohan, but he's pretty big. He's a big oak. He's not as fast as Doohan, but he ain't slow.

He's better in the air than Doohan. He's a much better defender, and he's got much better ball skills in terms of catch, pass, kicking, positional awareness, and he's a leader. He's the guy who's captain Glasgow to the Scottish rugby's second professional title in history in 30-odd years of pro-slash-interdistrict rugby. So they all have points of difference that are probably our national player pool has been deficient in over the years. We tend to have a good back three players but guys like Doohan don't just drop off a conveyor belt in Scotland.

And I'm not saying they do in South Africa either by the way. Guys of his size and speed, even that is not, if you look at the profile of wingers that the box have, I mean I guess you could maybe speak about Ethan Hooker or Keenan Moody being similar in size. They've got different attributes, probably more agile than Doohan. But they all bring something different. And from a coaching side, you know, Sean Everett's at a real seminal point in his Edinburgh career because Edinburgh have been very poor for quite a long time while spending a lot of money.

And there are players in that squad that have worked under probably four head coaches, certainly three plus an interim head coach and the culture there I would have question marks over it I think I think they maybe just a little bit too close to to the union maybe there are some parallels with with some of the teams I don't know I mean the Storm has obviously been very successful but maybe because they've been bailed out by the union and they're they're kind of they're in Cape Town close to the kind of power base I don't know but Edinburgh I think they they mean they literally play in the shadow of Murrayfield. They get changed in Murrayfield, they walk across the car park and through the tunnel to play. So I think they need to really understand what their identity is and that's a problem that predates Sean Everett. He's completely ripping the club apart this summer, off-field, new heads of department, new assistant coaches. He put a plan to the managing director when they were negotiating his new contract to say, I would like to stay and this is what I'm going to do.

If you want me to stay, I need to be empowered to do this. and they backed him to do that. So this is make or break. Fans are very, very sceptical of where Edinburgh are going and whether he's the right man to lead them. Polar opposite of Glasgow, obviously, as we'll talk about.

Franco is a fascinating man. He's completely and utterly deadpan publicly. He gives so little away with his facial expressions. We've had this same experience, Jamie. yeah because he's done this part and literally yeah we'll be nodding along with you right now if people could only and we're never going to do this if they could only see franco off camera and then what he puts on the public it's a different person and um so engaging so insightful takes he takes huge risks um he's a game player he's a chess player so what's your experience with him yeah just just exactly that he's um he i see i see parallels with rassi in how he coaches a team and brings a group of men together but they are completely diametrically opposed characters in how they communicate publicly and how they be i mean could you imagine could you imagine franco dancing at a braille out the back of his garden with some clippies in coat no chance i actually spoke you've maybe had him on the podcast apologies for my ignorance if you have i spoke to him no i'm not frank i spoke to nick mallet um about franco and rassi because he obviously coached them both in the 90s and it was quite funny as no franco was always there freshly pressed trousers winds not in the tide done up on time if you had a beer it was probably a shandy and he was very concerned about how we were going to play and what his role is in the team and how he's going to do this and how he's going to do that and shouldn't we do this or that And Rassi was obviously the alpha, the big dog even then in terms of his playing style and his personality.

It's so different. But I think they see they came in quite similar ways, actually. And the beauty of what Franco has done at Glasgow is he hasn't actually recruited an awful lot. The year he came in was summer 2022. He arrived late into pre-season.

I think he arrived in the late July, August time. So about six, seven weeks to get them going. And he beasted them. A lot of that work was going to happen anyway, but he ramped it up and it was all about repeat efforts, getting off the floor, high tempo stuff. The number of down-ups they were doing was brutal.

The first game they went over to Benetton, Franco's old team, and they got pumped. They got properly pumped and the players looked gassed. And you're like, what have these guys been doing all summer? Oh my God, he's beasted them too much. And gradually that sort of catch-up effect of all the anaerobic stuff they'd done during the off-season, the summer, year, winter, made itself felt.

and they flew that year. He controlled everything from the start. He was coaching scrum sessions, boys, honestly. Former fly-half. I don't know he'd ever coached a scrum session in his life.

And he was coaching scrum sessions while the scrum coach stood beside him, probably going, well, no, that's not how you would bind. That's not what we're going to do. Because he wanted to understand. He came in on his own. No recruitment.

That had all been done before him. No coaches. He inherited the staff that were there. And that was it. He'd signed nobody that first year.

Literally not a single player. I think JP Dupree, a giant ex-Cheetahs lock, came up from sale as a bit of a stopgap and was good, actually, for Glasgow. But that was kind of it. So the players he had were the players he had. Now, he had a fantastic squad, full of internationals, Hughie Pelotu, Adam Hastings, Tom Jordan was still there, Jack Dempsey, you know, a lot of lions, a lot of quality players.

But he got them playing a much better brand of rugby while not sacrificing a lot of the set piece and physical side of the game that Danny Wilson had prioritised, who was Franco's predecessor, who actually got sacked for... They got pumped by 80 by Leinster in the URC quarterfinals, and they kind of look like a team that had just given up the ghost, and he got sacked pretty much the day of that, when actually they'd had an all-right season. So it was quite a twist of fate that Franco was in there in the first place. But what he did is leadership qualities, his ability to get buy-in from the guys. The players love him.

The players absolutely love him because behind closed doors he is different. He's very stoic and very he doesn't leave anybody in doubt that he's the boss. He's in charge and it's his decision but he also empowers them to problem solve within his framework. He has very high standards but they don't want to disappoint him. I think it's more, it's the old thing you piss off your mum and she's not angry she's disappointed kind of vibe sometimes with the guys and he's got them playing a wonderfully engaging brand of rugby but also brand of rugby that delivers a hell of a lot of close quarter tries you know glasgow set set records for mall tries under franco um because they drilled that so well and people think about glasgow they go oh joshie mckay cancelieri you know hugh jones tom jordan sione tupolotu staffer mcdell you know real thoroughbred backline players all the skills and all the fluency, but a lot of that is built on incredible accuracy at the breakdown, without having the biggest guys and a phenomenally successful and prolific driving mole.

So they can sort of bludgeon you physically, or they can get the scalpel out and slice you to bits out wide, and I think that's what made Franco very successful. And then the mentality piece, when they won the title, they obviously had to take care of the Stormers in Glasgow, Then they went to Toulman Park. And yes, Munster are not what they were years previously, but they were the defending champions at that point. And there's a huge edge and rivalry in that fixture going back 10, 12 years. And they took care of Munster.

And then they went to Loftus. And they actually looked like, I mean, MVA, you were there. We were actually in holiday in South Africa at this point, but you'd have been there, MVA, you were telling us off air. And, you know, they looked like the more physical and more better conditioned team to play at altitude, which I can't ever recall seeing certainly at the end of a season when a team goes to Loftus in a final you go, you're going to be in the meat grinder you're going to be in the mangle these guys, when they had the driving mall to either win it or force extra time at the end and Glasgow held them up a couple of times right on 80 minutes and you're just thinking there's no many teams, Tom Jordan smoking people big forwards getting bashed backwards I can't think of many teams that have gone to Loftus ever, literally ever and been as physically oppressive and supreme as Glasgow were So there a whole load of bits to why Franco has been successful And a lot of it is I think the mindset he instilled And that's why people want him for Scotland, because he's proven he can win things. And he's proven he can upset the odds.

And he's proven that his teams, I mean, barring the too long game a couple of weeks ago, his teams don't, I'll paraphrase, defecate in the sheets when the pressure comes on, which has been leveled at Scotland on many, many occasions. for many years. We are fascinated with Franco. We are, and I think when I say we, I mean everyone in South African rugby is very interested in this cat. And it's because he seems elusive.

He's a bit of a mystery. And I think he enjoys that, by the way. But I was thinking, and you've known a lot of coaches, MV has been around coaches. I've been embedded with the Stormers, he's been by the Bulls. We've kind of got to know some guys.

and I was trying to draw parallels and say, what is the common element? Because it's not about how loud and quiet you are. They are very good, quiet coaches. They're very loud, good coaches. I think it's life force.

There's a certain force to him that if you're around him, you catch it, you beam it, you feel it, which means as a player, you believe him. When he tells you something that doesn't seem right, but he says, dude, anyway, then you do it and you believe him. And if he says, you have gas, you have legs, then maybe you think you do, even if you don't. The other thing is they're all curious. They're curious about things outside rugby.

They're always learning about everything. They're soaking up stuff. Whether it's Jake White, Rassi Erasmus, Franco Smith, John Dobson, they are incredibly well-read. They are sneaky smart. They pretend to be non-intellectual.

They really are very intellectual. Is that your feeling about Franco? That he's playing a bit of a game there? I see similarities with Johanna van der Khran as well. who you may have had on the pod, may not, I'm not sure, down at Bath and the kind of...

He's obviously been lavishly backed to shape the club the way he sees fit. And what's the point in hiring a guy like that if you're not going to let him do what he needs to do? But he completely resurrected that team. And I mean, it's probably the dream job for a coach, that, because you've got a big beast of a team with loads of cash that's been underperforming for years and years. And actually, we'd have got relegated, had the Prem rules allowed for it one of the years before he came in.

and he completely installed new heads of department, head of S&C, head of medical, new mental skills coach, and gradually, bit by bit, they've gone back up and they've won a treble, and they're competing hard. They've got a hell of a task to go over to Bordeaux and get themselves into a European final again, but they're going further in the Champions Cup they have done for years, and they're top of the prem. So I see similarities there. with Franco, he has a wonderful interview with the BBC at the start of last season, I think it was, and they were talking about, obviously, the title win and what he'd done and everything else, and he referred to himself as a dream giver, which I thought was a beautiful summation, in a way, only a couple of degrees from what you were talking about there, Harry, around having that life force and that believability where there's something intangible with these guys that are really successful where you're right, they think about the game a different way and they make players who may have been sceptical before and there were plenty of times, I spoke to all sorts, I spoke to Seb Negri who you may well want to have on the podcast with his ancestry in Zim and in Durban. He had him at Italy and Franco was telling him to be out on the edge all the time and he was like but um my job is to run over people three yards from the ruck and make 15 carries knock on my ribs and my right shoulder from carrying go off on 60 minutes without a single breath left in my body and he's like no no but think how much damage you'll do if we get you the ball out there in the tram lines rather than just running at brick walls all day someone else can do that you go out there and we'll find a way of getting you and you see you know you see Glasgow do that very well with edge forwards um Jack Dempsey's probably the best example of that.

But there are others too, Gregor Brown, who carry really well and they create shape that gets the ball to them in those positions. And I think Franco's always been very good at presenting something that seems unconventional. Johan van Kran as well, he had Munster trying to kick drop goals pretty much off every single phase in a European game because he'd worked out if the, I think they were playing Toulon, who had as usual an enormous pack that would not, probably wouldn't function in another league because the anaerobic demands would be too much for them, they'd have to lose some weight and he's like, if we make them run X number of metres and chase back to the ring goal area, do a goal line drop, then chase back do a goal line drop, chase back, do a goal line drop and keep the ball, ball and play times aren't going to be that high but they're basically just going to be doing a bleak test for 30 minutes, we might win over there and otherwise we can't match them physically, we probably can't match them technically we're going to tire them out and try and beat them and Simon Zeebo told me that and he was like we lost narrowly but if the game had gone another 10 minutes they were fucked part of my language and we probably would have won so you're right there's a I think that life force side of it is absolutely what it is it's just a there are loads of different ways of communicating and delivering messages and there are bombastic coaches and there are softly spoken coaches and there are physically impressive coaching specimens like Rassi like Jeff Parling. Johan Ackerman for the Bulls right now. Johan Ackerman, yes.

Massive, massive human being. And guys like that. Potter Human, I guess, as well. He's been embroiled in a few scraps over the years. And Alpha, you know, Wayne Smith.

He's quite a small bloke, but he was the free thinker in trendsetter in rugby for most of professionalism, really. He coached the game. Graham Henry, not a big imposing man but what charisma he had and I think you're right, it's that intangible ability to generate buy-in and create something for your players to unite around without it just being empty words because in the corporate world, the sporting world how many bullshit merchants are there really? Millions of so many, and you're like how do you get promoted there? Well you've just said all the right buzzwords for 10 years and nailed the odd job interview and here you are.

No, I think you're 100% right. It's that one thing that links all the best coaches is that Rassi would deliver it very differently to Franco, but they both have that precious capacity to present an idea to a player or introduce something to a player, make them think about the game differently and then make them wholeheartedly believe that if they do this they will beat a highly motivated highly skilled opponent who probably has the same level of training, fitness and attributes as they do. Yeah, it's interesting with Franco as well that he's got the attack going lethally. The ball moves quickly. On our pod, he talked about how they actually track how many passes per practice that are completed.

They keep stats on that, and the number is surprising, like 1,000 per practice or something. A low penalty count and scramble defense that is like they're defending for their life. They're tracking back and there's always bodies in the picture. no one ever scores uncontested against Glasgow. But I was thinking about the personalities in there.

I mean, Adam Ace, he's a shit talker, isn't he? You have, I mean, Jack Dempsey is a psycho. You know, he's dealing with people who are not exactly farm boy keys, you know, from Puchov's through them, and then maybe not all praying and taking a knee. He can handle that. He can handle all that stuff.

And so it makes me think that he's learned incredible abilities on how to bridge the gap culturally. Who he's coaching is not just same, same, same. That's something that Franco spoke about a lot when I first met him. So I had been in touch with him when he got the job. I interviewed him a couple of times when he was at the Cheetahs when he was at Benetton, just remotely, just on WhatsApp calls and things around URC expansion, nothing particularly exciting, just run-of-the-mill news pieces.

And then I got in touch with him around, can we do something when you come over and do a big sit down piece yeah yeah we'll do that and he did a round of media and I went to that and then he was like look I know you wanted to do something separate and come to the office one day so I went to Scottsden and I think I probably struck a bad first impression because it was summertime in Glasgow which means the temperature may have soared as high as 18 degrees celsius who knows and I was in quite a relaxed casual outfit which of course Franco would not have been particularly impressed with I think I had like a purple summer t-shirt on and a pair of shorts um on my laptop bag and he was a bit like what like what was this and he came in a beautiful white shirt and chinos and i'm like okay i might have misjudged how this is going to go and but i sat with him for an hour or so um and he was he was brilliant no no media officer there not that they would have a problem if they were but um and and we had some great chats off the record as well around what he wanted to do and he was asking me things about the history of the club because he hadn't actually looked into that all that much like Where were they last year? Yeah, I thought so. Yeah, okay, I'll listen to that. And then he was talking about things they'd done before and the style of play and why. He's like, no, we're not doing that.

I don't think this training's right. We're going to change it this way and make it shorter and higher intensity. But he was also talking about the places he'd been because one of the questions you have to, obviously, if you're there as a journalist as I was that day, you have to ask the shitty questions, which is the same shitty questions that would have been asked of someone like Ahenko Fenter when he arrived, which is, why have they signed you? You know, you're not Scottish. We've got two pro teams.

Are you just taking up a space that a young Scottish coach could have, that somebody else could be, Mike Blair be there, whatever? So you're asking these questions, going, Franco, people from the outside, I know your CV's very strong because I understand the context of where you've been and what you've done. You've been at Benetton when they had no money, not the Benetton of today when they've got the entire Italian team, a couple of world champions in Fekitoa, Laina Umanga Brex and Menacello you know he had a far inferior team to that and he was at the Cheetahs when they had no money and won the Curry Cup twice and was actually quite credible in the Pro 14 as it became when the Kings and Cheetahs came in at first the Kings obviously were on and off the field sadly were a complete basket case but the Cheetahs were played an entertaining brand of rugby my Pimpy was there and I think Joel Penko was there there were some really exciting players and Franco was the coach obviously Enko Venter was there as well. So I'd asked him, I said, people look at your CV cold and without context and go, Benetton, Cheetahs, lost pretty much all your games as Italy coach. What credentials are you bringing here?

And he accepted the question and then once we stopped talking he gave a more, let's say forceful answer to that, which wasn't for publication and I probably shouldn't repeat it here even though it's four years ago. But I think there was an expletive in it from memory. Not directed at me, just in terms of, you know, it was along the lines of people who say that are going to eat their words, effectively, and they have. But he said, look, I've never been unsuccessful. Look at the contest.

I knew this because, obviously, I watched a lot of rugby. And that ties into what you were mentioning there. He understands, despite being from a certain upbringing where he wouldn't have been exposed to any of those cultures, really. He was a teacher from the Free State. who was very diligent, very God-fearing, and would drive hour after hour every day to go and train and go and work and combine his rugby with his teaching aspirations.

He wouldn't have been exposed to that as a kid at all. And now he's got this cultural intelligence where he can bring all these guys together. You can't think of anyone different than Sione Vailanu, who was outstanding for Franco when he came in. Franco made him lose about 30 kilos right enough, but he was outstanding for Franco when he came in. He's got some injuries now, and I think he's going to head off to France at the end of the season.

And someone like, you know, I don't know, a George Horner, a Hugh Jones, or an Adam Hastings, you know, big, big type A personalities from, I mean, let's not be around the beach, from privilege as well, be it in England or here in South Africa. So he's been very, very effective in tying all those strands together and bringing that intangible side of the game to bear in Glasgow. And you can see that in how they play for each other. There was a point in the Six Nations this year where everyone was talking about Franco Smith because they were saying maybe Gregor's time was done. Maybe he had lost the change room.

Maybe his voice had grown stale. And it was because they lost to Italy. and now we know I mean obviously we should know by now we should have known before that losing to Italy is not quite the career ending calamity that people portrayed as in the Dave Rennie's job at the Wallabies for example now Italy is because of Franco's building back in the day has a core of players that everyone would want in their squad but there was this problem here with Grigor where it seemed like he was only in the job because he always wins the Calcutta Cup there's the narrow win, Shea win over Wales then there was the magical 50-40 win in France, Gregor the Great and then it's the third on the log and then what might have been if you had just beaten Italy in one then would there have been a final weekend to remember so what is the main takeaway in Scotland about Gregor? Best coach ever? medium sort of bureaucrat you know mid manager somewhere in between where does he sit a few parts that I before I talk about Gregor I would say a few things one I still think it's it was a nonsensical decision that Dave Rennie got chopped after that Italy game for all sorts of reasons one because he was playing a heavily rotated team against a very good Italy side on the back of I think five I think we played five two matches and you're like well and they were obviously choking to get rid of him to get Eddie Jones in and look how that worked out and now Dave Rennie is probably going to spank them all rugby championship with the All Blacks so well done Rugby Australia on that front that was a a McLennan decision I think I mean having known Dave Rennie a bit when he was obviously here in Glasgow I thought he was treated very shoddily the second part of that around Franco and Italy I think I was fortunate enough to be over doing the TV commentary on the England game in the Stadio Olimpico just about six weeks ago, when Italy beat England for the first time, and it was just remarkable scenes, real euphoria all around us, journalists crying in the stands and all the rest of it, and all that stuff's great not relevant to this podcast, but you look at the guys who played for Italy, who've been part of that squad, who gave them their first caps, who brought them into the fold, who played a big role in their rugby education Yes Gonzalo Quesada is now driving the train and has undoubtedly made huge strides with that team in terms of varying their game plan in terms of pragmatism in terms of mentality but you look at the guys um who was who was the first coach at italy most of those guys had certainly the the the kind of 23 24 25 26 that kind of mid-20s bracket michele lamoro giuliani um i think brex because he qualified obviously and came over later.

There's a good number of those guys, the Canoni brothers, who would have been around, Fischetti as well, I think, Nicotera, the hooker. There's a really strong number of them who Franco backed early and played and played and played. And he actually got rid of some of the sentimental stories like Parise and Geraldini didn't last too long. Luca Bigi was kind of, was finishing up around that time. And he was quite firm at putting a line in the sand there.

Very hard on them, but he backed them to play and gave them freedom to play a style of rugby that was too loose. And they got cuffed a few times because you're playing, you know, barbarian style rugby with kids in the most ruthless championship probably in the world. And what's going to happen? Obviously, you're going to take some lickings along the way. But I think you talk to any of those guys, they would credit Franco with a fairly major role in how that team and those players developed.

So my take on that was, I think quietly back here in Scotland, Franco Smith would have been, I don't know, raising a glass of tomato juice to the Italian boys who he capped and blooded. I mean, Paolo Garbisi, he capped Paolo Garbisi before he barely played for Benetton, for Treviso. Well, that's to say, that's a very good point, Jamie. Literally, Franco, when he was talking to MVNI on this pod, speaking of Italy, you could tell he was still... Oh, yeah.

He was right there. Those were his boys. He spent a huge part of his life there. You know, his boys have played there. Obviously, his son, Jean, is with the Sharks now, but his son, Franco Jr.

, was with Zebra. I think he's still there. I'm not sure, but played against Franco's Glasgow team here last season in a URC match. He spent a huge part of his life there, both as a player and a coach, and he's got a real strong affinity. I think he still has a place over there somewhere.

if he's off and Franco Jr has been playing, he's gone over and watched them or spent the weekend in Parma watching them play he's got a huge affinity with Italian rugby, so that was the two points I wanted to address just from your question before I spoke about Gregor my take on how people are feeling about Gregor is confused, honestly because we've seen the best and worst of Scotland again and actually Italy might have been the straw that snapped the camel's spine but really it had been building for a while it was successive collapses under pressure in big games Leeds being blown or leaving itself with a mountain to climb getting to the final shoulder of the peak and then falling back down at the car park again as happened against the All Blacks You may remember in November where Scotland famously or infamously have never beaten the All Blacks. They were, I think, 16-0 down at halftime, scored two phenomenal tries, played brilliant multi-phase rugby. Kyle Stane's try was terrific. It didn't look like much because he just runs it in the corner. But the play, the diversity, the penetration in that play leading up to it was some of the best I've seen from a Scotland team.

and you go, oh my goodness, this is, you know, New Zealand are rocking here, 70,000 people are screaming, Darcy Graham almost scores, knocks the ball in the corner, a great cover tackle I think from McKenzie who then goes up and kills us at the other end in the last 20 and you go, it's the same old story. Argentina a week later, Scotland I think are 20, 21 points up and lose a game, five or six unanswered tries in the second half and lose a game and just collapse and that was the first time I have ever heard a Scotland team booed off the pitch at Murrayfield. doesn't really happen in rugby here it's a more genteel kind of slightly less much less tribal fan base than football here for example where if you chuck a 2-0 lead at home in any football match particularly in Scotland you're getting abused and slaughtered as you walk up the tunnel and that's not a totally Scottish thing, that's a football culture thing but rugby fans here it just doesn't happen. I've heard one or two players get booed individually. Scandalously, Dan Parks was booed once because he was a favourite scapegoat of the Scotland team of that era sort of 15 years ago.

And he was brought on as a bloodbind and they cheered when they brought him off again when the other bloke, Phil Godwin, had been stitched up. And it was really, that felt like almost endgame for Gregor. There were a few things to that. One, the Scottish Rugby Union had a new CEO, one of his first things was to give Gregor a new deal. His first big decision in his lap is, right, one, women's team, what we do and how we better support him, and two, men's team, what do we do?

Do we keep Gregor and back him to the next World Cup or do we not? And they chose to back him. So if three months after that, he then has to make a decision of, well, we've been booed off at Murrayfield, do I sack Gregor? If I sack Gregor, I look like I've made a terrible decision right in the door, and if I don't sack him, I probably look like a weak CEO for not making the hard decision. So, I mean, you deal with executives, I'm sure, all the time in your day-to-day stuff, Harry.

And I think he probably was painted into a corner there to some extent. So they backed Gregor and backed him. And then you've got to remember, you go pretty, not calamitous, but pretty abject autumn into Italy first up. And you play such unintelligent rugby in the rain. you lose two really crap tries and then you're chasing a game in a downpour and we can't batter italy because we don't have the personnel so we're trying to play and it's just it was it was really predictable once it went 14-0 you're like oh okay now there's a now there's a biblical downpour in rome we're in real trouble here because this is going to be a shit fight and that's not how we're set up to play.

So that was just another thing piled onto the rubble against Gregor. And it's funny, I think the England thing is... I'm torn on the England thing because I don't... there's no... within the playing group and within the national psyche there's no more, oh we beat England so it's okay.

That is such a, I hate that mindset in Scotland regarding any sport, any, any, anything, because it's so small minded. It's like, oh, our whole identities are in beating England. No, our whole identity should be challenging for Six Nations finally after all these years and doing something in a tournament over consistently over five games. Just the same as England fans got frustrated with Eddie Jones saying all about the World Cup, mate, all about the World Cup and finishing fourth and third in Six Nations. Always jam tomorrow.

So I really rail against that narrative, which I think maybe English press or English people think is a thing here. But among the rugby, the kind of core rugby support among the players, it's definitely, definitely not. And it drives me nuts that. But there's no doubting that the Calcutta Cup record has done some heavy lifting for Gregor. The way Gregor sets the team up, the way Scotland play, has been so beautifully, it's almost like a template for how you want to attack against England and where England's deficiencies can be exposed.

And it's happened again and again and again. And it happened, you know, stunningly at Murrayfield this year. So that gave everybody a bit of a pep again. And then you go to Wales, you go, I mean, any team that's ever won a Six Nations or a Grand Slam, it's very, very seldom they have five excellent performances. You go back at any of the Grand Slam teams, they've thrown a shanner in there at some point.

They've thrown a real dead duck performance and that felt like Scotland's, but they got out of it. And I've seen many Scotland teams lose those games. So I wasn't actually that bothered as a fan or as a journalist. I was like, they were rank. And if Wales are more switched on to that restart from Finn and Darcy Graham, they'd probably win the game.

They should have won the game, but I've seen a lot of Wales-Scotland games go the other way when Scotland should have won and they didn't. So I don't really care. And Wales similarly to Italy, different story, but they're not as bad as everyone else says either, as has been proven. Then you go play France, and that is arguably the best Scotland performance of the professional era, probably since the last great game against France in 1999, and the Parc de France with Gregor himself destroying a very good French team. And then you go, oh my god, why are we talking about, this is what we know Gregor can produce this game plan, this level of rugby intellect to pick apart France and England.

But then you left this real strange taste in the mouth after the Ireland game going, I've seen this movie every year, sometimes twice a year for 10 years. At World Cups in Six Nations, in standalone internationals, it's the same movie over and over and over again. Well, it's become bizarre, Jamie. I don't know the exact numbers, maybe you know it, but what's the number in a row at this point? Well, the last time was before Gregor was head coach, it was Verne Cotter it was 2017, famously the Ireland bus got lost or delayed on its way to Murrayfield and Joe Schmidt as he's wont to do, was quite frustrated about that in his post-match presser and Scotland raced into an early lead and I think it was 31-21 or something they won by a couple of scores Schurog scored twice they scored off a trick play at a line-out with Hamish Watson But Gregor has never beaten Gregor has never beaten this is the thing with Gregor, he's never beaten the box, never beaten the ABs obviously and he's never beaten Ireland.

Ireland are the only Six Nations team he hasn't beaten and actually when you look at it, we haven't come particularly close to it either. The last two World Cups must win games against Ireland, pumpings like generational thrashings between two rugby nations who are similar in size and resource and population base and player number and actually barring Leinster, similar in investment as well. So it's just infuriating. And I think that kind of, because of such a recency bias with sport, that sort of, it just tempered everything a bit. You get to the end of the Six Nations, you go, well, we still ended up in mid-table, still won three out of five, which is par for Scotland.

More than that is, you know, in fact, you'd argue four out five would actually have been we'd be par for for the players that scotland have um but there's been this curious almost schizophrenic narrative that's followed gregor over the course of the tournament from ah he's got to go he's got to go and i was of the mindset after italy i was like i don't know that he survives you know you don't want to write off all tournament but you're going to talk about he survives and if you go in and um and lose to england at home that's a tough one i I don't know if he'd have come back from that. Not just because England are a bigger, richer rugby nation and should beat Scotland more often than not, not that they have recently, but because the perception of getting done by our biggest rivals at home after shit in the bed against Argentina, failing to capitalise in an amazing position against New Zealand, and then losing away in Rome in a downpour. You go, there's a lot of negative momentum piling up on you here. I don't know that you can climb out of that hole as a coach and you'd then be going to Wales and Cardiff next who've got nothing to lose and everything to gain and it's the opposite for you. So I honestly thought he was going to go after the Italy game.

I thought, not that week, you understand, but after the tournament, I was like, I don't know if he's going to make it. And I feel horrible saying that because Gregor is a highly intelligent, highly successful rugby coach who's great with us, he's great with commentators, great with the media, very open, never shirks the question. and he got hammered in the press and the boys went for him. Tom English, Rob Robertson, Andy Burke, they asked really, really strong journalistic questions of him after Argentina, after Italy. And he dealt with them all with real class and grace.

Yes, he was nippy, as you would be in those circumstances. He was frustrated, of course, but he dealt with them with real integrity. And it was quite funny watching him in the coach's box, you know, sipping from his Chili's flask, or I don't know what was in there, and during the France game, Scotland would score this amazing try. He's obviously conceived in terms of the shape and the phase play and it would cut to him and he would go, for the listeners, I'm sipping my plastic water bottle for effect. And you go, yeah, and you can always see him thinking, he's too classy a guy to say, but you can always see him thinking, fucking told you.

That was one of my favourite moments of a coaching box cut to seen by the television producers because he was absolutely that was an f-you moment the the the length of the sip was too long for it to be uh happenstance that was that was literally look at me thank you very much you know you'll start see yourself out and and so maybe that that was uh maybe that was needed maybe gregor needed to face the abyss um but it's fascinating from from our end it's fascinating to watch that soap opera This is the Lecker Rugby Pod. Only on Megaphone Rugby. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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