Former Australian triathlete Jack Smith signs on to whip Gold Coast Eagles into shape
The Gold Coast Eagles’ coaching revamp has secured the services of a former Australian triathlete champion as strength and conditioning coach for the 2020 season.
Rugby
Don't miss out on the headlines from Rugby. Followed categories will be added to My News.
The Gold Coast Eagles’ coaching revamp has secured the services of former Australian triathlete Jack Smith as strength and conditioning coach.
Smith, who has sponsored the club for three seasons through his personal training business Vision PT on Ferry Road, said he is ready to bring to life new coach Leigh Ireland’s vision of forging strong, durable players to bring the GCDRU’s Phil Temperton Cup back to James Overrell Park.
Smith said the work in snapping the Eagles’ five-year First Grade premiership drought would begin almost immediately.
“We’ll be kicking off with some stuff next week,” Smith said.
“It’s nothing super serious but we’re starting to build the (fitness) base, the earlier the better.
“Last year the Eagles weren’t allowed to have a proper pre-season and contact work and they had 41 soft tissue injuries in a single weekend.”
Smith’s triathlon experience has made him an expert in the field of endurance but rugby players need more than that to succeed, he said.
“In terms of coaching these boys one of the big things we’re talking about is the importance to building capacity and load, so when the season arrives they’re durable enough to go without those soft tissue injuries,” he said.
“We want strong, durable players who can make contest after contest.
“To continue to make those contests they need to be fit and strong.
“Leigh’s vision is a physical team who can apply pressure and there can be no scoreboard pressure without physical pressure.”
Both head coach and strength and conditioning coach share personal training backgrounds, which Smith said would help ensure the right messaging was spread to the playing group.
“We have an understanding, a common knowledge,” Smith said.
“He’s involved in developing players so he has trust in me to take care of their physical preparation.”
The trust of the club is not blindly given.
Smith’s involvement with the Eagles stretches far beyond his formal affiliation which began earlier this week.
The proximity of his Vision PT studio to the clubhouse, some 500 metres, has made his business a natural hub for current and former Eagles looking to keep fit over the off-season.
“Lots of our clients are old boys of the club, including some of my longest term clients.
“We do stuff at their home ground as well so it’s a pretty easy fit.”
MEET HEAD COACH LEIGH IRELAND
Meet Leigh Ireland, the Gold Coast club rugby fraternity’s latest induction into the head coaching ranks.
Here are eight things you might not have known about the new Eagles boss.
What are you doing in my swamp?
The larger than life former prop has a larger than life nickname too - Shrek.
“It’s become the nickname which a lot of people know me as,” Ireland said.
“It’s built up from my former work (as a personal trainer).
“I worked with a lot of clients previously who had depression and anxiety.
“I’m a very big man with a beard, which can be quite intimidating to some.
“I was there with the family of a young girl who was coming into the gym to work with me and she was quite intimidated.
“Once she sat down and spoke to me she said I was just like Shrek - big and friendly.
“That was five or six years ago and it’s stuck ever since.”
Schoolboy star
Ireland was raised in Central Queensland and won a sporting scholarship to attend renowned front row nursery Toowoomba Grammar School.
In 2005, Ireland’s senior year, he packed down the TGS scrum with future Brumbies, Stormers and Queensland Reds prop JP Smith.
Such was Ireland’s class that Smith’s twin brother Ruan - another future Super Rugby veteran prop - played in the backrow to accommodate him.
Punk rocker
If the Eagles are looking for post-match entertainment in 2021, look no further than the new head coach.
Ireland played bass guitar in Toowoomba punk rock band The 19th in his late teens.
He’s kept his skills sharp but enjoys playing more chilled out tunes now he’s entered his 30s.
Country to the core
Ireland’s first representative rugby experience was with the Queensland Country Under-21s back in 2003.
An impressive accolade, doubly so because the budding front row forward was only 16 at the time.
Not his first Gold Coast rodeo
The Eagles will be Ireland’s first club on the Gold Coast as a head coach, but not as a player.
The Burleigh Bears will always be Ireland’s first love in Coast sport after the Bears took a punt on converting a Reds Academy prop into an NRL hopeful at the same position.
With the Titans one year away from their first season Ireland took the plunge at the new code.
“It didn’t work out too well,” Ireland said.
“I went from a 125 kilogram tighthead prop to 93 kilograms in just six weeks.
“They even tried moving me into the centres but I was always a rugby prop.”
Ireland walked out on the Bears after one season to join the Grafton Redmen in the Northern Rivers rugby competition before Premier Grade stints at Souths and Wests in Brisbane.
Master rebuilder
The Eagles are in need of a rebuild but they’re confident they’ve got the man for the job at the helm.
Ireland helped the Wynnum Bugs launch their first ever Colts program in 2017 and coached the team to fourth place in their first season and a premiership in their second.
Good impression
Club president Jason Teren knew he’d found the man to lead the Eagles forward when club captain Angus Blake met the prospective coach for the first time.
After that brief meeting Blake turned to Teren and said, “I don’t care what it takes - we have to get this bloke involved with the club somehow.”
The club’s selection committee agreed, and despite the interest of applicants with brighter resumes and playing histories, went with the man they thought could drive the club forward.
Beach rugby aficionado
Front row forwards, Rugby Sevens and beach sprints are almost never a happy marriage.
For Ireland, it’s a match made in heaven.
The new Eagles coach is the founding member of Australia’s most prominent Beach 5s team, the Hammerhead Rugby Club.
The Hammerheads elite men’s side qualified for the Beach Rugby 5s final at Greemount Beach over the week with a team starring several of Ireland's former teammates and coaching proteges.
Former schoolmate JP Smith, University of Queensland premier grade lock Connor Vest and Wests Bulldogs scrumhalf Fletcher Spicer all took the field while Queensland State of Origin champion centre Willie Tonga was a late scratching through injury.
8 Next Gen 7s rugby rookies to black book for the 2032 Olympics
A former Wallaby centre has likened one of Queensland’s best unsigned rugby teens to All Blacks World Cup-winning fullback Ben Smith.
Field of Dreams: Gold Coast Touch’s remarkable 50th birthday
Gold Coast Touch is about to celebrate 50 years. Its base is on prime Southport development space. Here’s what the future holds.