Summary The headlines spelled it out bluntly. "The public hanging of a rugby union coach" ... "Wallaby coach jumps ... before he was pushed." The epitaphs were being written for Greg Smith, the Shakespeare loving former English teacher, whose two year reign as coach of the national rugby union team had just come to an abrupt and ignominious end. But as the drama peaked, a team from Australian Story had already been behind the scenes filming for three weeks. The story they wanted was the universal, human story of a man and his family undergoing an agonising ordeal in the public spotlight against the backdrop of national sporting expectations and a very hostile press and public. Surprisingly, given the pressure he was under, Smith readily agreed to being shadowed by our team, here in Australia and overseas, as the Wallabies played two crucial matches (against the All Blacks and the Springboks) in the countdown to the ARFU Board meeting which was due to decide Smith's future. The result is a close up and intensely personal profile which reveals a very different Smith from the press caricatures. And for the first time, some of the personal stresses Smith was under in that critical three week period are revealed. Our story is not a sports profile, but a close up look at a man undergoing an agonising ordeal in the public spotlight against the backdrop of national sporting expectations and a very hostile press and public.

• Documentary
• Biography