Nucifora puts a muzzle on it

The Queenslander in David Nucifora has long since overtaken his fiery Sicilian heritage. Picture / Richard Robinson

Benji the dog is a bitzer and a bum sniffer. He's an Aussie import like his owner: former Brumbies coach turned Blues assistant coach, David Nucifora.

"He'll jump all over you," warns Nucifora. Can't he coach him? "Nah," he says, "he's a lost cause."

How encouraged, you think, Blues fans will be to hear this.

Of course, Nucifora may be playing down his dog-handling skills. He is very accomplished at that particular game.

He is certainly adept at projecting an air of absolute calm and smiling diplomacy while stubbornly refusing to play the game I would like to engage him in. He operates - at least at home just up the road from Eden Park - at a rather more sedate pace than his hound.

When I phoned Nucifora, I said: "We thought this would be an interesting week to catch up with you." He thought this was pretty funny and laughed and said: "Now why would that be?"

He doesn't miss a trick, although, oddly, he did seem to miss seeing the knives about to go into the back from the Brumbies.

The "why would that be" question is - as we and every Blues fan well knows - because Nucifora is the guy who coached the Brumbies to their second Super 12 title, and got the boot for his efforts.

The Blues play the Brumbies today at Eden Park so Nucifora must, surely, be hoping that this is pay-back time.

It is no good pursuing this line, and I had a fair idea that this would be so before I went to meet him.

With Nucifora I think most people, except perhaps those Brumbies players who wanted him out and got him out, meet their match.

I hoped that he might be quite fiery because he's from Sicilian stock, but the Queenslander in him long ago won that battle of temperaments. In addition to being a coach he has a business which specialises in insolvency auctions - "somehow I get drawn into all the odd jobs" - and he used to call the auctions himself.

I try to wind him up a bit by suggesting that Queenslanders speak too slowly to be auctioneers, but that just makes him laugh some more. I asked him whether his Sicilian heritage had contributed at all to his temperament and he mock growled and said, "I don't know where you're going here."

And then: "No I don't think so, I would have reacted in a different way if it had, wouldn't I?"

But honestly, he must be a bit of a bastard otherwise the Brumbies players wouldn't have wanted to get rid of him. He certainly has a reputation, which he agrees with, for telling people things they don't much want to hear.

He says, despite the fact that being thought of as a tough bastard is a compliment in rugby terms, "I don't sort of reflect on it like that. I'd like to see people viewing it as I was just doing my job and ... I did it because I believed in something and I believed I made decisions because they were right. And some people didn't agree with them, so that was the end of it." This sounds like politics. He says "I don't know what you'd call it. I'd probably call it a few things under my breath. Call it politics. Call it what you like, I suppose."

The flipside of his plain-speaking reputation is his reputation - as of now - for not telling people (ie me) what I do want to hear. He is naturally and infuriatingly reticent but this is something which is probably written into footy coaches' job descriptions.

He won't, for example, tell me whether Carlos Spencer would be in the side. While it is true that he is naturally close-mouthed, this may have also been payback for me teasing him about having come over here to be nasty to our players.

He says, "ha, ha. It's all speculation, isn't it?" Of course the day after I go to talk to Nucifora it is announced that Spencer is out.

Well, he didn't get to where he is today by telling silly girl reporters things.

Where he is today is where he says he wants to be and if he hadn't got the sack, well, he wouldn't be here, would he?

He says he did have another offer in Australia, and he could have gone elsewhere, but that he was flattered to be asked to come to New Zealand to be the first Aussie to coach a Super 12 side here. Even though the Blues give him plenty of flak: "It's non-stop."

This is water off an Aussie's back, no doubt. He is one of those annoyingly eternally optimistic types. On being sacked he says: "I suppose if you're a bit of a fatalist, it opens up other opportunities for me. If it hadn't happened I wouldn't be here."

He hangs out with other coaches a bit because he is invited to go and talk to them at courses. On what? I ask. On how to coach a winning team and get the sack for being successful? Oh that old joke, his face says. I asked if he knew any jokes about coaches and he tells me one told to him by his wife Annabel's father, David Clark, also a rugby coach.

This is the joke: "There's two kinds of coaches. Ones who have been sacked and ones who are waiting to be sacked." He says, "I always thought it was a joke."

Here's another joke, one which Blues supporters won't find the slightest bit funny. I tell Nucifora that the Blues played so appallingly against the Crusaders at Eden Park that my bloke, who went to the game, switched allegiances halfway through. "Oh, right," he says, not laughing, "well, that's his prerogative, isn't it."

There must be a bit of added pressure on Nucifora today because he's supposed to have the inside running on the Brumbies. Not that you would notice. And yes, I'm back to this again, he must really, really want that payback.

And yet - the guy likes plain talking - the Blues aren't going to win, are they? "Well," he says, laconic as ever, "we're probably not expected to. I'd imagine that they're the favourites."

But he would really like that win, wouldn't he? More than most wins? "Every week I want to win badly, there's no doubt about that."

Oh, go on, I say, you must want to get those buggers back.

But he's off again on a spiel about how there are some really good young guys in the team - notice he doesn't say really good old guys: the ones who put the knives in - and about how it's just the nature of any job that you won't get on with everybody.

Well, I tried. I gave him an opportunity to do a bit of free pre-match slagging off and he refused to take it. He's a hell of a good bastard that Nucifora, but when it comes to being a nasty bastard he's as much of a lost cause as that mutt.