Posted this in the Uzbekistan thread, probably better placed here.
Slightly coming at the other side from this one.
If there is one guy who has the right to be seriously pissed off/disillusioned/uninterested because of the way the end of the Herbert era happened it has to be Smith. He shows up in Honiara, made captain of what seemed to be an incredibly disfunctional ship and then had to face the public in the wake of Mexico while everything else was crumbling around him. Sure, he was part of a group of players that went through all that but he was the captain. Asked to do an impossible job.
If off the back of that he says x,y,z needs to happen and he doesn't believe it has, then I can understand his decision. None of us have seen the report post Mexico or read the players verdicts into what went on so we can't know what was said by who and what guarantees were made.
Yes, it's not a good look if he swans back for the big games and it sets a really bad precedent but if there is one guy I could probably understand it coming from, it's him.
Sure but the whole set-up has changed since then. If he doesn't want to be a part of that, no problem, but that's the end of it for me.
But if he said that as part of a new regime he needed to see x,y,z and he has seen no evidence of that, then you could see why he would be miffed.
Ok, but considering NZF's limitations it seems to me that they have done a pretty thorough job of changing things round. So if he won't play in this set-up, he won't play for us again. Or he thinks he can take a year off and walk back into the team - which NZF can't allow to happen for obvious reasons. Or he basically doesn't care but does fancy the big games so he's testing NZF and if they don't let him pick and choose as he likes he won't play again.
In all 3 scenarios he doesn't play again for us without doing plenty of penance, and I don't see him doing that