| Sports |
Soccer on a roll despite wet ground
Former Great Britain captain Garry Schofield has criticised the
decision this week to appoint Australian Tony Smith as the new
Great Britain rugby league coach.
Leeds coach Smith, 40, will take up the post full time at the end
of the season but Schofield is unhappy that a Briton was not
offered the job.
“I’m not in favour of Australians taking the national job,”
Schofield told Five Live show on BBC on Monday.
“We’ve tried it before and it’s been a total failure.”
Smith, the second Australian to coach Britain after David Waite,
will become England coach for the 2008 World Cup, with the Lions
set-up taking a back seat.
But Schofield insists that the likes of Salford boss Karl
Harrison, Warrington coach Paul Cullen or Wakefield’s John Kear
should have been approached after Wasps’ assistant coach Shaun
Edwards ruled himself out.
“Unless we start giving the English coaches the opportunity at the
highest level we’ll never know how good they are,” said Schofield.
“Tony Smith hasn’t proved himself, from my point of view, at the
Rhinos. OK, they won the Grand Final in 2004 but since then the
Rhinos have been going downhill and he has no experience
whatsoever in handling international players.
“I don’t think Tony Smith would have been offered the opportunity
to coach the Rhinos after this season anyway so I think he’s
jumped ship and I think Richard Lewis [the Rugby Football League
chief executive] has got it wrong.”
Schofield was also sceptical as to whether the coach of Great
Britain needed to be a full-time role. Smith replaces Brian Noble,
who did the job on a part-time basis.
“Without a shadow of a doubt, with the seasons in Great Britain
and in Australia running concurrent with each other, the post is
not full time,” he said.
Smith’s first match in charge is set to be against France in June,
and the Lions also have a three-Test series against New Zealand at
the end of the season.
 
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