Aaron Smith’s name is now forever linked with the Highlanders but he could easily have been with the Blues or (gasp) the Crusaders. In part two of our chat with the departing great, Otago Daily Times sports editor Hayden Meikle asks Smith to reflect on his career in the South.
His greatness seems obvious now but there was a time when few realised Aaron Luke Smith was something special.
He had made his debut for Manawatu as a 19-year-old in 2008, and been included in the Blues wider training squad two years later, but a full-time Super Rugby gig was not immediately on the table.
Then along came Jamie Joseph.
The former Otago loose forward, a year before he joined the Highlanders, had been appointed New Zealand Maori coach for three home games in the June window.
"I knew I was in the running for maybe making the Maori squad but I’d heard it was all about whether Piri Weepu would be picked, and at the time he was fluctuating with his weight," Smith (34) recalled.
"Piri made the All Blacks, and 10 minutes later I got the call from Jamie saying I was coming on the Maori tour. That’s how our connection started."
Smith expected to back up Chris Smylie, the former Otago halfback who had lots of top-level experience.
Smylie lasted 10 minutes against the Barbarians before getting injured, and Smith got to play the rest of that game and against both Ireland A and England A.
"A month later, Jamie Joe rings me and says, ‘I’ve just got the Highlanders coaching job. I’ve got a list of players and you’re on it. Do you want to come down south?’
"I was with the Blues the year before, so I rang them out of respect to say, ‘hey, I’d like to come back to the Blues because you gave me a chance, but I’ve got an offer of a full contract from the Highlanders’. I asked if they were willing to give me a contract. They said, ‘oh, we’ll wait till the end of the NPC’.
"I said, ‘I’m taking what I can. This is my dream’. I rang Jamie back and said, ‘I’m coming.’ And he’s like, ‘Sweet.’
"I think I signed the next day. And Jamie is a very stringent negotiator. He’d only given me two days."
The Crusaders, perish the thought, had also been sniffing around. But they, like the Blues, wanted Smith to prove his worth in another NPC campaign.
Joseph knew the wee fellow was good enough already.
Moving from Feilding to Dunedin was a big call for Smith.
"I remember a conversation I had with Mum and Dad about how it was time to leave the nest. I’d been in Palmy, went to Auckland for six months, and I’d really enjoyed getting away.
"You come back to Palmy and Feilding, and maybe you go back to some old habits, and you socialise a bit more. I quite enjoyed the uncomfortable feeling of being away, and kind of thrived in that environment and thinking, I’m here to do something."
Confidence is no issue for Smith now. He knows he belongs at the top level — though he takes nothing for granted, and trains every week like he is preparing for his Highlanders debut. All those years ago, however, he thought Super Rugby would be his peak, and the thought of playing 114 tests for the All Blacks would have been hilarious.
Even when he arrived in Dunedin, he kept his targets moderately low as the Highlanders had an established senior halfback in Jimmy Cowan.
"He was the starting halfback for the All Blacks. He went to the World Cup. So I was learning off him and just came into that season with the opportunity to cement a bit of my future and have a crack.
"I just wanted to compete. Actually my first goal was literally just trying to beat Sean Romans to be on the bench behind Jimmy.
"Sean was pretty sharp, and he’d played a couple of years for the Highlanders. But all I was thinking about was trying to beat one guy, and it wasn’t Jimmy. It was just Sean Romans."
Then came 2013. A season that will live in infamy.
It was all very exciting at the time. The Highlanders attracted All Blacks stars Andrew Hore, Tony Woodcock and Ma’a Nonu to join the likes of Smith and namesake Ben, Hosea Gear, Tamati Ellison, Brad Thorn, Jarrad Hoeata, Mose Tuiali’i and Colin Slade.
The superstar squad misfired badly, losing its first eight games and finishing a dismal 14th in the 15-team competition.
Smith felt the Highlanders had made good progress in 2011-12 but got the recipe badly wrong in 2013.
"We kind of threw out what we’d built in that two years around hard work and going deep into games and battling away.
"Looking at our roster, with 10 All Blacks, we were thinking, ‘s..., yeah, it might just happen’. But nothing just happened. Nothing ever just happens.
"You can say what you want about that season. It wasn’t through lack of trying. And you had to get excited. We had a rockstar backline and four or five pretty good All Blacks in the forwards.
"It was just ... yeah. We chucked a team together and hoped it would work, and it didn’t. That’s just the facts.
"Maybe the coaches got it wrong. When the Highlanders have been good, it’s been around the collective. Getting one guy over the line — not about the star getting the ball.
"I’d never say those All Blacks that came were there for the wrong reasons. But if you’re not here and fully committed, you don’t buy in as well. You won’t work that extra yard to cover your mate. You won’t die for the team, you know.
"There were levels in the team to how people were getting treated. And that’s not the Highlanders way.
"The feeling was wrong because we were talking about championships before we even got to a playoff."
Two years later, the Highlanders were not just talking about a championship.
They still had some established or rising stars — the Smiths, Sopoaga, Waisake Naholo, Malakai Fekitoa, Liam Coltman, Nasi Manu — but there were also lots of grafters, and the overall picture was a of a champion team, not a team of champions.
The Highlanders had to get to the top the hard way. They finished fourth after the regular season before beating the Chiefs in a Dunedin quarterfinal.
"That was like our final," Smith recalled.
"We played so well. The whole week was a buzz, and Dunedin was pumping. When that whistle blew, I was like, man, this is amazing. We’ve won a playoff game at home."
Then it was off to Sydney, where the Highlanders beat the Waratahs in the semifinal to earn a final date with the red-hot Hurricanes in Wellington.
Most favoured the Hurricanes, who had won 14 of 16 games during the season and were loaded with star talent, but the Highlanders ground them down, won 21-14 and celebrated a fairy tale.
"When I kicked it out, it was just that the joy of, ‘bugger all of you, we won’.
"We got it right. And we were dominant the whole game. We defended well. We knew our plan, and we had great tacklers.
"You look back and think, we were perfect once. We won a title. That was very special. To be honest, that 2015 final is my greatest rugby achievement.
"Winning that trophy, in that comp, with our team that had been totally written off, was so special and so sweet, and still makes me smile every time I see a memory of it.
"We had built a team, and a game plan, and we were buying into what our strengths were as a team. We were innovative, fast, we kicked more than people would think, we would create turnovers, and we could play unstructured football."
Aaron Smith on
Folau Fakatava
"You’re going to see a young man grow and take the keys. Put him in and take over this team and take it to where he can."
Super Rugby
"I’d love to get the South African teams back. Touring South Africa was one of the best parts of playing Super Rugby. It brought you tighter as a team, and it gave you those experiences of seeing poverty and seeing Africa and seeing lions or whatever. Australia is very similar to New Zealand, but Africa is real. That touring and that bonding changed my life. It’s so different, and amazing. You come back to New Zealand and realise how grateful you are to live in a country like this."
Three Favourite Highlanders
"Ben Smith, Lima Sopoaga, Elliot Dixon."
Highlanders' Future
"What the Landers have set up the last few years around our academy, and the young group of men they’ve brought in, that’s what we didn’t have in the past. We’d always have to buy our talent in. There’s a good crop of young players down here and we need to harness that. They’re from the region, and they love the region. They love this team and understand it. I believe in this team, and its future. Don’t ever lose the faith. We will always give our all and we will never give up."
Selecting All Blacks From Overseas
"No. The reason we stay in New Zealand is to bring through the future. The only way to make the All Blacks is to play here, and that’s how it should be."
Death Of His Father
"This was definitely a game Dad had planned to come to. I think he was planning on coming down and hanging out with the grandkids. It sucks, to be honest. Every time I play rugby now, it’s with the definite thought of my Dad, and the conversations we’d have. I’d always ring him on the way to the game, and he’d kind of give me the goofy laugh and the awkward jokes. He’d always say, you got this, son. It’s been interesting playing without that sort of stuff. I’ll be thinking of him on Friday night, for sure, and just trying to do him proud. He’s here. He’s with me always."
