European Cup/Leinster v Glasgow: Gerry Thornley talks to a blithe spirit who brings colour and dash to his coaching
On the day Michael Cheika and David Knox arrived in Dublin last May to formalise their three-year deal with Leinster, the former Wallabies coach Bob Dwyer talked glowingly about Knox. He also told of a bohemian spirit who walked to the beat of a different drum and spoke a strange kind of jive language.
Recalling those words of Dwyer's, as a means of introduction, might have backfired more spectacularly with a different individual. "Considering Bob and I don't talk any more that's pretty interesting," begins Knox. Oops.
"At Bristol he fined me £5,000 sterling for getting sent off in a game, so we don't talk any more. I went and saw a solicitor and they said 'that's bull'. When you're only getting paid so much they can't fine you; it's against the law. I probably could have sued the club. It was terrible. They took £1,000 a month out of my wages after tax. So I lost all my desire to play there and ended up going home."
As one can guess from the fired-up, highly voluble figure screaming in often colourful language from the stands at Leinster matches, Knox, thankfully, isn't one of life's diplomats, and any granting of interviews prompts concern in the Leinster ranks. As we walk past Reggie Corrigan in Riverview at lunchtime during the week, the Leinster prop implores the assistant coach not to say anything too remiss.
Away from match days, though, Knox is your archetypal, laid-back Aussie.
Self-deprecating and dry, he's content to talk passionately and at length about rugby and his eventful life in the game, and while not quite the free-spirited maverick of his playing days, he does indeed walk to a different drumbeat.
Knox was 35 at the time of his bust-up with Dwyer, and a final port of call would subsequently be Narbonne at the end of a decidedly nomadic career. For much of his 20s, while all the time still at Randwick in Sydney, he also played in Italy, first with Petrarca in Padova, near Venice, at the age of 21, and later with Livorno, a relative rugby outpost.
"The first two years in Petrarca were probably the best two years of my life. I went from being a 21-year-old living with my mother to going to live in a country like Italy on my own and playing rugby. There was a bit of money to be made, nothing extravagant, but just the experience of living in the north of Italy, and learning the language. For a boy from Australia that was superb, and plus the first year in Padova we won the national championship."
Aside from finally swaying totally toward rugby and away from cricket, it also taught him 10-man rugby after a free-spirited, play-what-you see introduction to the game at Randwick.
Livorno was comparatively low-key, a small club in a port city near Florence, and then in the second division.
"It's quite a poor joint compared to the north of Italy, which is so rich. It's in Tuscany and they're very proud because that's where the Italian language was born. But it was really good coming from Padova, where they're so up themselves and all rich northerners, to go to Tuscany, where they're more like Australians, more laid-back."
He also brought his Randwick number eight and team-mate Cheika along, and returned to Australia in 1994 where, to everyone's surprise, including his own, he was recalled to the Wallabies team at the age of 30 against the All Blacks and Samoa.
With the advent of professionalism and the Super 12, Knox and a bunch of other cast-offs such as Owen Finegan, Adam Magro and Euan MacKenzie headed off from the New South Wales Waratahs to Canberra and proceeded to kick-start the ACT Brumbies' story in 1996, reaching the Super 12 final against the brilliant Auckland Blues team in 97.
A short-term Currie Cup contract was interrupted by another surprise recall to the Wallabies, yet of his stint in Durban, Knox says with a knowing chuckle: "That was probably the second-best experience. Rugby is a religion there and it's a beautiful place. Obviously it's got its energy there and it's got its problems, but I found it interesting. They had a professional set-up that was far and away ahead of Australia. For all those years they were locked away - all they had was provincial football."
Nowadays though, after such a nomadic career, he admits to missing home, a southern suburb of Sydney by the beach, Maroubra. Although that's a working-class rugby league area, Knox attended Matraville High in nearby La Perouse, which was also the alma matter of the Ella brothers (Mark, Glen and Gary) and Eddie Jones, among others. Combined with Randwick, Matraville High was the making of not just a rugby union man but also a free spirit.
Born in the same year as Michael Lynagh, Knox would win only 13 caps over a 13-year Test career. Not the quickest, but blessed with vision, deft hands and a sweet left boot, he was known as The Wizard. "Throwing open holes or getting guys away on the outside was the most satisfying thing."
He played under Alan Jones, Dwyer, Greg Smith, Rod Macqueen and even a year at ACT under Eddie Jones, a former flatmate from their Randwick days at rugby and cricket. Yet none left a more profound impression than his schoolteacher and coach at Matraville.
"The Ella brothers revolutionised the game and the guy who coached them was a guy from Randwick, Geoff Mould, who brought the '77 schoolboys side here. They changed the game into a flat alignment and not kick the ball, which in rugby then was the game.
"He was a bit of an eccentric sort of guy. He played baseball for Australia, and he was a cricketer as well and a surf lifesaver, and he was a funny teacher, health and PE. And his big claim to fame was he taught the Ellas how to play, so as a number 10 you couldn't get a more outstanding education in the game."
Knox played true to that spirit when joining Randwick, although his grandfather had been a rugby league player and cricketer, and initially batting held centre stage for Knox.
"Where does the best player in the team bat, mate? Number three."
He went on an under-19 Australian cricket team at the age of 17 to Pakistan, was player of the tournament in the Kookaburra Shield, an interstate Australia/New Zealand competition, in 1978 and won a championship in first-grade cricket with Randwick.
Macqueen, he reckons, was the biggest influence on him as an adult player. By then Knox was in his 30s and his ability to think outside the box suited the Brumbies' thinking, and he also played outside George Gregan, not to mention creative forces like Pat Howard outside him and Joe Roff, "a freak", and a young Steve Larkham at fullback.
"I remember they called us the Bitter and Twisted, because we used that philosophy. We were the leftovers, and we beat New South Wales by eight tries to nil down in Canberra, by 56-9 or something. And that was one of the most satisfying games I ever played. We killed them, and played great rugby. We wanted to prove a point. It's still one of the games I can look back at on the tape because it was so satisfying."
He's not embittered when he looks back, having had his moment in the sun with the Brumbies and then when recalled for the 1997 Tri-Nations and the win over South Africa. So Knox headed off into the sunset with a 10-3, win-loss Test record and his memories, while never envisaging becoming a coach.
"No, never, even though I was a schoolteacher. Every coach I had, I had a stouch (fight) with. I didn't get on well with many coaches because I didn't have a very good training mentality. I didn't like getting told what to do. I suppose if you're told what to do from the age of five up until 18, when I left school, it was time to do what I wanted to do. And even when it came to footie I didn't like it being too organised, because it was a game to me."
After a year out, Randwick and Cheika pushed Knox into coming down for a look. He did a few drills and kept coming back.
"I forgot what it was like being around football. I'd played it until I was 36, and then took a year out of it. I just love being around the team and the players. I still really miss playing, and there's nothing like playing, but I'm too sore and too old and my knees are gone now, but the next best thing is coaching."
He'd been to Ireland in 1981 as part of the Australian schools side, returning with the Wallabies in 1991 for the World Cup, and in 1996, scoring one of his two Test tries late on to clinch victory.
The 1991 World Cup was less than memorable, in many senses. With Lynagh holding down the outhalf slot and no need for Knox on the bench, he recalls the fortnight in Dublin for the quarter- and semi-finals as a holiday.
"Out of the 14 nights here I was pissed for 13 nights - out of my brain. Getting up, going training the next morning at nine, not feeling the best, going back to bed at lunchtime, sleeping until seven and back out again."
Having gone unbeaten with Randwick last season, Cheika and himself sought a new challenge. They put in applications for Wasps and the new Super 14 post in Perth, whereupon Leinster came calling, and he can scarcely believe he's inherited a backline of such talent.
He admits to having had self-doubts, but the mushrooming of Contepomi into the visionary outhalf he is, the rejuvenation of Girvan Dempsey and Gordon D'Arcy, not to mention some of the collective rugby they've played, suggests Knox has a flair for this coaching lark.
However, when you suggest Contepomi must be something of a kindred spirit, he pauses and reveals how coaching has altered his thinking.
"You live and die by your results. If you can play with flair all the better, but it's always about wins and losses as a coach."
While a belated convert to some structures, it's not "a robot structure" at Leinster.
"There's too many teams, especially in Europe, who play that structured game, and half the time I watch the rugby on TV, I have to turn it off. I watch a team stay on the other team's line for 20 minutes and nothing happens," shaking his head in astonishment, "I gotta turn it off, mate."
Alas there've been trip-ups, not least to Bath and Bourgoin in the Heineken European Cup, and Llanelli most recently in the Celtic League. Had those games not slipped away but for a few key incidents, which he discusses at length, Leinster would be top of both their pool and the League.
"It could have been the dream season with a tiny little bit of luck but we're still going okay."
The net result is to leave them with no room for manoeuvre in their remaining two pool games, starting at home to Glasgow today. Glasgow will be better, but then he argues, "we're a much better team now too."
Regardless of whether they progress to the knockout stages, you'd hope he and Cheika hang around for at least three years, not least because such overdue stability would signify good times. Whenever he goes walkabout again, he'd like to leave them as better footballers, "more competent, more confident, more skilful and with a good attitude to the game. I know they were good players when I got here; I just want them to be better."
He wouldn't have minded coaching himself, and if he wanted to play or coach in a more regimental atmosphere, he says he'd have joined the navy or the army.
"Yeah, I'm a difficult kind of person. I'm probably a bit selfish, but I don't think I'm the hardest person to get along with. I guess other guys would be kicking the corners and putting up high balls, but I will always believe until I go to my grave that I want the game to be played in the right way. There's a spirit in the game and I want to play the game like that."
