Integrity, dignity and a legendary career: Sports greats pay tribute to ‘Smithy’
By Iain Payten
“When you saw the byline Wayne Smith, you knew the story was legitimate, you knew he’d done his research and you knew it was real.”
So said former Wallabies captain Tim Horan on Wednesday morning after the sudden passing of legendary journalist Wayne Smith on Tuesday at his home on the Sunshine Coast, in Queensland. He was 69.
Wayne Smith at his final Wallabies press conference in 2021.Credit: Brendan Hertel/QRU
The sombre news sent many corners of Australian sport and journalism into mourning, as they remembered “Smithy” and his award-winning exploits in more than 40 years at the keyboard. Having first entered journalism as a 17-year-old cadet in 1971, Smith quickly became a highly respected figure in the newspaper world covering news and sport, with rugby, swimming and Olympic sports his particular fortes.
A meticulous, driven and passionate journalist, whose ability to write beautifully was matched by his capacity to break news via a vast network of contacts, Smith spent the majority of his five-decade career with The Courier-Mail and The Australian.
In recent years, after “retiring” from a full-time role at The Australian, Smith kept his hand in by penning a must-read weekly rugby column for The Sydney Morning Herald.
Former Queensland and Wallabies coach John Connolly was one of Smith’s good friends, and the pair spoke several times a week.
Wayne Smith’s first press pass in 1971.
“He will be incredibly missed. He was such a good bloke,” Connolly said.
“I met him in 1971, when I was playing for Brothers, so we go back a long way. What he was, he was very much his own man. You were friends with him but he wrote what he thought and said what he meant.”
Smith was a passionate Queenslander, and he once joked while toasting the 1976 Reds team at a reunion that while former Reds captain turned eye surgeon Mark Loane had helped him avoid become “literally a one-eyed journalist” when he had a retina problem, “he has not been able to rectify my habit of seeing everything with a maroon tinge”.
Smith was famous for his incredible work ethic, often filing thousands of words a day for The Australian. All were well-informed and well considered – heaven help the subeditor who changed something without a phone call – and scoops were routine.
Jim Tucker, Greg Growden, Wayne Smith and Gordon Bray at a rugby function in 2018.
“He was incredibly competitive with other journalists. Nothing upset him more than being scooped on something. He would blow up deluxe,” Connolly laughed.
Horan remembers Smith being one of the first to inform him of his Wallabies debut in 1989.
“When I got announced on debut, I was working at XXXX. My brother was the first to ring me, because back then the team got released on the wire, and my brother was a journalist and he rang and said congratulations. I said: ‘What for?’,” Horan said.
“He said: ‘You’re in the Test team to play the All Blacks on the weekend’. I said: ‘Yeah, whatever’, and to be honest, I didn’t believe him. Thirty seconds later, Smithy rings, and this is on landlines back in the day, somehow he found my landline at XXXX. When he rang, I went ‘wow’. Hearing from Smithy, I believed it.”
Wallabies great Tim Horan in 1989, his first year of Test rugby.Credit: AP
After first spotting him playing grade rugby in Queensland, Smith always rated former Wallabies captain John Eales as the best player he had seen. The respect was mutual.
“Wayne Smith was rugby in Australia,” Eales said. “He was sharp witted, brave and insightful in all his writing, effortlessly making you laugh while making his point. I’ll miss him a lot. He was a great friend and a great man whose words and memories will live on for all of us who enjoyed them.”
Smith was uncompromising in his desire to hold administrators and politicians to account, and former Australian Rugby Union boss John O’Neill was a man frequently in his sights.
But like Eales, O’Neill always respected Smith.
Australian captain John Eales (C) and his teammates celebrate after winning the 1999 Rugby Union World Cup final against France. Credit: Getty Images
“Wayne literally covered the field in sports journalism; rugby, cricket, swimming and the Olympics,” O’Neill said.
“He had comprehensive intelligence and insights on all them. His work ethic was second to none. May he rest in eternal peace.”
Similarly, Smith and legendary Sydney Morning Herald writer Greg Growden were fierce rivals in their decades on the rugby beat, but they grew to be good friends in their later years. Smith rated Growden the biggest influence on his career.
Smith covered six Rugby World Cups but through a quirk of fate, and a move into the news and investigations desks of The Courier Mail, he missed the 1991 and 1999 tournaments, which Australia won. Famously, Smith also missed his beloved Queensland’s Super Rugby win in 2011 due to a family wedding.
Kieran Perkins was a huge admirer of Wayne Smith.Credit: Fairfax
“But I’d do it all again tomorrow,” Smith would say.
Asking Smith to choose between rugby and swimming was to demand the name of a favourite child, and his expertise and respected status in swimming made him one of Australia leading writers on that sport, too.
“He just knew the sport inside out. He was around it all the time, he didn’t just fly in and fly out when there was an Olympics happening. It made such a huge difference ... I don’t think he ever wrote a bad word about me,” Olympic champion Susie O’Neill said.
“He knew how much training we did, the effort it took, the sacrifices we made, all of the details. That’s what I think of when I think of Wayne Smith.”
Wayne Smith in 2021 at Suncorp Stadium
Gold medallist Kieren Perkins said Smith’s presence on pool decks all over the world meant he was engaged and deeply knowledgeable about the sport, and was the only person Perkins ever considered writing an autobiography with.
“Wayne was a journalist of an old time, right?” Perkins said.
“He frames the greatest moments of my career but on the flipside, when there was controversy or challenge, we had our moments of butting heads but what I can say about Wayne ... even the bad headlines, I could not argue it wasn’t correct. He absolutely had an integrity and a dignity of engagement with us, that you always knew where you stood.”
Smith took great pride in planting the seed in the mind of the Brisbane mayor in 2015 for his city to work up an Olympic Games bid for 2032. The idea took off, and six years later Brisbane were awarded the Games.
‘It fills me with sadness that he won’t be there to proudly witness the reality he envisioned.’
IOC vice president John Coates
“Not only did he reside in the pantheon of the great sports writers this country has produced, his lobbying for the Brisbane Games with the Council of Mayors Southeast Queensland was a catalyst for those Games that are now coming to our shores. It fills me with sadness that he won’t be there to proudly witness the reality he envisioned,” IOC vice president John Coates said.
For all his tenacity and toughness, what stood Smith out and above the pack over four decades was how much he cared for the sports – and the athletes – he covered. He respected them deeply and was always able to convey the person behind the athlete. That care informed everything he wrote.
On Smith’s last day, he tapped out the finishing touches to his last column and sent it through to the Sydney Morning Herald’s sports editor.
Smith spoke about the Waratahs and the Reds having the chance, in the Super Rugby finals this weekend, to farewell two great stalwarts, Michael Hooper and Brad Thorn.
The last line reads: “Thank you, Hoops. Thank you, Thorny.”
It could not have been a more fitting last sentence from Wayne Keith Smith.
Thank you, Smithy.
Read Wayne Smith’s final column here.
Watch all the action from the Super Rugby Pacific with every match streaming ad-free, live and on demand on Stan Sport.
Sports news, results and expert commentary. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.