Q&A with Eric Smith: 'There's a great deal of hunger'
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The Northern Pride have made remarkable strides in 2024, going from seventh to first in the space of 12 months.
New coach Eric Smith helped guide them to this year's minor premiership, bringing his experience from the Melbourne Storm system as a former Sunshine Coast Falcons coach and from his time as an assistant with the Newcastle Knights.
In a sit down interview with the Queensland Rugby League, Smith speaks on how a tough pre-season in the Cairns heat helped pave the way for the minor premiership, how he deals with the pressure of being a coach, and the resilience the Pride have shown on their way to this year's finals series.
Q & A with Eric Smith
Q: You said in pre-season that one of your big goals for 2024 was to be a "heavy presence" in this year's finals series. You are now heading into the finals as minor premiers. How do you feel about where the team is and what you've achieved?
Smith: We're happy with where we're sitting, we love that we have two home semi-finals. But the thing is, we as a group still don't think we've played our best football, especially the last month. We think we have a few more gears to go up yet if we can get it right... and if we want to go deep into the finals. We've been able to win games against good opposition, like our last two games against Burleigh and the Falcons. We don't think we've played our best but we were still able to find ways to win. Sometimes in semi-finals a lot of your game plans can go out the window. When you're playing the best teams, they sometimes force you to play a way you don't want to play and you need to find a way to win. Yes, we'd like to be playing our best football and hopefully we find glimpses of it this weekend. But the fact we're still able to win games and can fight in games, it's a massive positive. That fight and that grit is something that has been a theme throughout the year for us. It's what we've been building our season on - we haven't always played well or had games with 20 errors and we've had to defend our way to victory, but I think that's built some real resilience in our defensive line as well.
You mention the fight, grit and resilience. Is that something you've intentionally focused on or something that has naturally developed the more you've felt that target on your back being top of the ladder?
It's probably a bit of both. Early on in the pre-season, there was certain things I had seen from last season that I thought I could improve in this playing group and this team. We implemented some things around our defensive structures, around our competing and some details that I thought we could get some big bang for buck out of in the pre-season. The players were really good and bought into whatever I wanted to change and whatever I wanted to do. They actually trained hard. We trained hard and continued to train hard in season. I've made no apologies for that all year to the group. If we wanted to get results, this game only rewards you if you work hard. They realise that and as much as they haven't liked it at times, they can see the results. But as the season has gone on and we've been successful, it has put a target on us. The back end especially, teams have come with an energy they haven't had against other teams which has made us dig deep at times. We've sometimes been on the back foot and been under the pump where we've had to fight our way to wrestle back momentum and get on top. That probably has helped build the resilience as we've gone along in season as well. There's a really good belief in the group. It's never going to be perfect but if your teammate knows that if he makes a mistake or gets something wrong, that you've got his back and is going to cover you, that brings the group tighter as well.
You mentioned the pre-season there and working hard. At the start of the year, you said you built your coaching philosophy around those exact things. How much do you think that pre-season has set you up for where you are now?
Massively. I believe you can't have a good season if you don't have a good, long, tough pre-season. You can't get the reps in once the games start. If you've missed the boat with your pre-season, you can't overwork throughout the season to catch it up. Our pre-season - not only the physical work we've done but the standards we lived by - has definitely been the cornerstone in our season, for sure.
The 2024 Hostplus Cup minor premiers: Northern Pride
You also mentioned the target the team has felt on their backs. Are you expecting that to intensify over the next few weeks?
It's just a natural thing in sport. Teams naturally lift against a team who is going well because they know they need to. We haven't spoken about it. We've been very short-sighted in our preparation each week. We're just focusing on our review and what we need to get better at. We've never spoken about our ladder position. We had goals at the start of the year to finish in the top four and have a home semi-final. Now we've been able to get two, which is great. I'm expecting in the finals that everyone has a target on them now, not only us. Every game is super important. There are some teams in elimination games this weekend. If we don't lift our intensity and play semi-final football this weekend, we could be playing an elimination final next weekend. Every team now is coming with a different mindset. There's pressure and everything else that goes with it. That's all part of it. You'd rather be having the pressure of these games than being out of the competition and not making the finals. It's exciting, it is nerve-wrecking now, but you wouldn't trade it in for not being here.
Being the minor premiers, how do you deal with and manage the pressure?
We've been able to keep a level head on it most of the year. In the early part of the year, we lost games and lost back-to-back games at one point. There's been games we've won where we've been behind at halftime. It's not like we've just gone in and it's been all our own way. In every game there has been tough periods. The Tigers game for example, we were behind until the last 20 minutes. That's happened quite a number of times this year where we've only hit the front in the last 20 minutes of games. It hasn't always been smooth sailing. There's always been things to review and look at and that's kept a level head on us. We knew we weren't still where we needed to be, we still weren't playing consistent enough for 80 minutes. We've also had good depth which has put pressure on positions. There was a good group here last year and then you throw a handful of other decent players in and it puts pressure on, so training went up. If blokes got injured and someone else got a crack, that person knew they had to play well to keep their opportunity. A lot of this playing group hasn't been in this (finals) situation before and I think those lean years or the years where they haven't had the success we've had this year keeps driving that hunger. When you've come from a place where you're busting your guts in pre-season and working hard and not getting the results you wanted or playing finals, now they realise those moments don't come around very often. There's a great deal of hunger there to make sure we make the most of the opportunity and the position we've put ourselves in.
What about yourself? Do you feel that pressure more internally or externally and how do you deal with the pressure of your job?
I definitely feel the pressure. I'm similar to a player. I get nervous and feel the pressure every week. That's part of being a coach. Everyone wants to feel the highs and celebrate the wins and win premierships. But you can't just have those emotions without the feelings of losing or pressure or nervousness... questioning if you've done enough to prepare. That's my biggest thing I worry about is that I don't want to let the players down. I want to make sure I've done my job to prepare them the best I can. Have I shown them all the vision I need to show them? Have I done enough of a certain thing at training that prepares them for a certain opposition? I don't want to let them down and not prepare them for something they may not have seen or not get enough reps into them. I get nervous and I'm sure this weekend those nerves will go up another notch. How do I deal with it? I don't know how to answer that. I guess I've always been really big on attention to detail and being prepared. That is the way I deal with it. I wouldn't handle that nervousness as well if I didn't think we were prepared. You don't get it right every single time but the more you can be prepared, that gives you as much confidence as you can have going into a game.
What is the biggest thing you've learnt in this season with the Pride?
Coming from NRL systems at the Knights where you have fulltime players and that's all they do, you have more time to dive into a lot more detail, to show them a lot more stuff. They have more time for reps at training. There's a lot more information that you can give those players. Coming here, I just wanted to bring everything I know and dump it into pre-season. With the part-time players at this level, I learnt pretty quickly, all that information and detail, it's too much at this level. I just had to work out what I thought was essential and what we needed and what I thought we'd get the best value out of and really focus and drive home those things. My best learning from stepping back into Cup was less is more.
What would it mean to you personally to go all the way?
Personally, it would be massive. That's why we do this job. We do it because we want to win, we want to have success. Personally, it would be the highlight of my career to win a premiership here. I know how much this community still has fond memories of the last premierships that they've won. It's a proud history in this club, for a short time in the competition. To win another minor premiership for them was a small milestone. But it would be the highlight of my career if we were able to win the grand final, for sure.
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