World Cup winner relishing wide-ranging role with whipping boys of rugby

It still grates with England Women’s most decorated Six Nations coach Graham Smith that a decade on from his controversial departure from the RFU, a job at home continues to elude him.

Instead of preparing a team for the onset of the next Premiership Women’s Rugby season, for example, or working with the Red Roses, Smith will be in Vantaa, on the outskirts of Helsinki, as the head coach of the Estonian men’s national team, overseeing their Rugby Europe Conference match against Finland.

Sharing a blue, black and white flag is definitely the only similarity between Estonia and English Premiership champions Bath. Five months ago, they were beaten 120-5 by Saturday’s opponents.

Estonia is so far down the world rugby pecking order that they are not even on it. Until they gain full membership in World Rugby, the Baltic country won’t be ranked, nor will they receive the same benefits as existing members.

So, while their return to international 15s rugby came earlier than they had planned or were ready for, as recent results have shown, Smith felt they had no option but to go for it after the long hiatus due to Covid.

Estonia’s current 14-game losing run must be one of the longest of any active international team, dating back to 2016. But behind the cold truths of international results, former Scotland B cap Smith, a stalwart of the successful Moseley side of the 1980s, has made positive strides in improving rugby’s standing in the country.

“I am Head Coach of Estonian men and women, sevens and 15s, as well as being Director of Rugby for Estonian Rugby, and I am Head Coach of Tallinn Kalev Rugby Club, who play in the Finnish Championship because we don’t have a 15s championship in Estonia,” he explained.

“I’ve been trying to grow the game. When I first came out here, there was no rugby in universities, no rugby in schools, and there was no youth system. After three and a half years, we have four or five schools regularly doing some form of rugby, and we have rugby in the universities.

“This Friday, we have 120 students coming to our pitch to play rugby and cricket. And on the 24th of October, I am conducting the first-ever teaching training day for rugby in Estonia.

“We are looking forward and growing, but on the international stage, it is a big struggle. If you look at our last three or four games, we have lost by in excess of 70 to 120 points.

“I’ve seen comments on social media saying it is a disgrace to allow these games to go ahead. But the thing is, people don’t understand the bigger picture or what it means to play international rugby.

“We weren’t going to join 15s for another year, but we had the opportunity the season before last, and I decided to take it. It was a big risk, and it has proved to be a big risk. But in terms of becoming members of World Rugby, which we are not, we have to meet certain criteria. So playing international rugby is really important to us and we have to take our medicine.”

While Smith is making progress in building Estonian rugby from the bottom up, the men’s national team have much work to do before they can be considered competitive.

The squad of players taking the two-hour ferry trip across the Baltic Sea on Saturday morning for this weekend’s match will bear a close resemblance to the one that was hammered by 115 points back in May. In fact, the majority were around before Covid, when rugby in Estonia came to a complete standstill and very nearly didn’t return.

“We are probably the smallest union in Europe in terms of resources. We have the regulation number of registered players. We have over a hundred registered, but realistically, it is about 35, considering injuries, unavailability, and other factors,” explained Smith.

“We are relying a lot on the old guard to come back and play for their country, which you can only admire.

“Paul Davidson, who plays for Estonia and is the team manager, said 80% of the team who played the last game of 15s before we came back last year, in 2019, will be playing on Saturday.

“There are two ways of looking at that, you could go, ‘Christ, they haven’t really recruited anyone in that time’, or you can say the players are proud to play for their country, and for me, it is more important to concentrate on the latter.”

Smith started work in Estonia in May 2022, having been called up out of the blue by the Kalev Rugby Club’s president. It came at a good time because his contract as coach of London Irish Women had expired.

“I just came over for five months to coach Kalev Rugby Club after they had a meeting to decide whether they were going to try and continue rugby in Estonia or fold.

“I came on board in May and very quickly things spiralled, almost out of control. I was in Malta with the men’s sevens and in Serbia with the women’s sevens. At that point, the women only had 12 players, and that was the first game of international rugby they’d played in 2022.

“They asked me if I could stay a bit longer, and longer, and now I am a resident of Tallinn. I see my wife (back in the Midlands) about every two to three months.”

Graham Smith makes no apologies for saying hard cash is the reason why he relocated and became the man behind Estonian rugby. Once, when he was made redundant early in his coaching career, he had the bailiffs knocking at the door of his rented accommodation, with his young daughter inside, crying.

He has known hard times, including being let go by the RFU, along with Gary Street, shortly after they’d won the World Cup together in 2014.  For this reason, he’ll be forever grateful to Estonian rugby for making the unlikeliest of marriages happen.

“As part of the process, I had to be interviewed by the Estonian Olympic Committee to get my registration as an Estonian coach. I had to justify to them why I thought I was worthy of this recognition, and first of all, they said, ‘we know your CV, but we don’t know anything about rugby’. So I went through it and they said, ‘so, how did you end up here?

“The simple reason is that the contract with London Irish ended, and this was the first thing that came up. My answer is simple when people ask you why you want the job, I say it’s the money, and the reason I want money is because I want to make my family as secure in the future as possible.

“I said you pay me what I am worth and I will do the best that I can for this job. I don’t ask myself what am I doing here, I get down, I have mental lapses, because being away from your family is tough. But I am in a position where I can look after my family, and I will be forever grateful to Estonian rugby for that; they have valued me more than the 20 years I worked for the RFU.

“So I don’t ask what I am doing here, the question I ask is why can’t I get a job in the country with the CV I have?”

Smith is one of an elite band of coaches who passed the RFU’s now disbanded Level 5 qualification, together with respected figures such as Stuart Lancaster, Phil Davies and Nigel Redman.

He started coaching England Women in 2003 and won more Six Nations titles (seven) and Grand Slams (six) than any other coach.

“I still keep in touch with Gary (Street) as much as I can. He has the same record as Simon Middleton, and I am one better in medals than both of them. I got seven Six Nations titles, and I got Six Grand Slams out of that. And I don’t think anyone will ever beat that.

“I am not saying this because I am bitter and twisted; there have been a lot of people debating this over many years,” he added.

“I have no axe to grind with John Mitchell at all. I know John, and whatever he gets on the back of the World Cup, good luck to him. However, for people to say John Mitchell should be knighted, they should knight Gary Street first.”

Smith has far lower ambitions this weekend. For him, success would be reducing the yawning gap on the scoreboard between Estonia and Finland. Scoring a second-half point against the Finns for the first time in history would be another small ‘win.’

“I said to the players on Sunday that losing by 120 points hurts, and it hurts badly. It’s not a criticism, but this is a fact: in the three-and-a-half years I’ve been involved in Estonian rugby, I have lost more games than in the previous 20 years of my coaching career. It hurts, but you have to go through it to try and move forward.

“Game plans are great, but if you don’t execute them, it’s no good. So the first thing you have to do is fight for your country, metaphorically, and if you do that, you give yourself a chance of getting a result.

“It’s going to be a tough game on Saturday. But we’ll be giving it our best shot to see how we can reduce that 120 points.”