Hanging up the boots on 300 games for the Bulldogs, Rohan Smith took a five year hiatus before returning to the Kennel - but after joining the coaching panel in October last year he couldn’t envision being anywhere else.
Senior Coach Brendan McCartney has even given Smith a vote of confidence after his twelve month apprenticeship as a Development Coach, promoting him to take on an assistant coaching role for 2013.
“It took me five years to get back here but hopefully I am here for a long time now,” Smith said.
Watch BulldogTV's exclusive interview with Assistant Coach Rohan Smith on the media player above.
Watch BulldogTV's exclusive interview with Assistant Coach Rohan Smith on the media player above.
“I think that when you come to work and you see the faces of the kids and the way that they develop it is pretty rewarding.
“It’s something that I was always wanting to do and something that I always looked forward to doing when I finished footy.
“Full time coach is a lot of work, I can give you that. Having a role in match day in Bulldogs and in match day at [Williamstown] with the developing kids, it was a pretty long, long year but is something I really enjoyed.”
While his job title has changed, Smith can still draw major similarities between the two roles as he oversees the development of a young back six.
“It was really good last year… doing some development stuff with the young kids and then obviously Macca came to me and said he would love for me to coach the back line group,” he said.
“I think a good team is based around, you know, a good defensive effort and a good defensive team, so it is something I am really looking forward to especially when we have got such a young group as well.
“It is still developing because they such a young group, but I think it is a really good challenge as well because
“They can play a lot of footy together - hopefully they can play 150 plus games together and that, you know, builds a really good defence.”
Moulding the back six to become ruthless and uncompromising in their defensive efforts, Smith is eager for his new challenge.
“With a young group, it is exciting you can teach them from scratch - we want to teach them a way that they want to be ruthless defenders and I think that is the way we want to teach them to play, so it is pretty exciting for us,” he said.
