'Aaron Smith changed the theory of the way the halfback should modernize the game'

The Professor, Sir Wayne Smith, has spared no superlatives when reflecting on the impact of Aaron Smith in an upcoming TV series.

Smith’s influence in both the domestic and the international arena was subsequently discussed by former All Blacks halfback Justin Marshall, who added further context to how Smith paved the way for today’s No. 9s and the game in general.

Sir Wayne Smith even went as far as to say the halfback was the best player in the world as recently as two years ago, ranking the Kiwi over his French counterpart Antoine Dupont.

“The best thing I can say about Aaron is, about two years ago they were putting together a list of current players, the top 50 in the world. I put Aaron Smith down as number one. As the most effective, game-changing, best player in the world at that time,” he said in the upcoming All Blacks Game Changers series.

“Everyone else was putting Antoine Dupont down as number one. I said yeah, he’s a good player, but how many competitions has he won? He’s got a few at Toulouse but how many major titles has he won with France?

“Aaron Smith has won all of them.”

It’s a bold call given Dupont was coming off a World Rugby Player of the Year award at that time and it was two years ago that France won the Six Nations.

Smith won the Rugby World Cup in 2015 when he was 26, the same age Dupont was at the Rugby World Cup in France last year when the hosts were eliminated in the quarter-final by eventual champions South Africa.

The distinction between team success and individual success wasn’t addressed in the preview clip but was followed up on by Justin Marshall, someone who certainly boasts a fair amount of knowledge about the halfback position.

“I think Aaron Smith changed the game and changed the theory of the way the halfback should modernize the game,” Marshall reacted on The Breakdown.

“There was a period that I was involved with where the game was quite slow around the breakdown, where the five-second rule wasn’t in play and you had to be a lot more creative. You could do that with your own physicality or use steps to try and bring forwards into it to create and generate momentum, to generate fast ball when it was static.

“The five-second rule was perfect for Aaron Smith and the type of player that he was. To come in and have the speed of the clearance, the ability to have vision, have pace.

“The game needed someone like him to say ‘This is how we’re going to speed the game up and this is how we’re going to do it’. I don’t think anybody in the modern day has replicated what he brought to that jersey.”