The 'very tough' moment for many in Southland rugby
“It was a weird situation going on there and then Hoani asked me to be captain, and at the start I wasn’t very comfortable with it. Especially taking over his reins."
Former Stags captain Brayden Mitchell has opened up about how uncomfortable it was taking over from good mate Jamie Mackintosh following Mackintosh’s messy exit from Southland rugby in 2016.
In an open and frank yarn with his former Hurricanes team mate James Marshall on the What A Lad podcast, Mitchell talked through the highs and lows of his career which ended abruptly through a neck injury.
It included the now 35-year-old delving into the drinking culture during his time at the Highlanders, his gambling habits alongside former Stags and Highlander John Hardie, and stepping into the Stags captaincy job in 2016 when he was reluctant to.
Mackintosh had captained the Stags through one of Southland rugby’s golden eras, which included two Ranfurly Shield victories.
The loosehead prop was the face of Southland rugby but when Hoani Macdonald took on the coaching job in 2016, he opted for change.
Mackintosh wasn’t selected in the 2016 Stags squad and Macdonald asked Mitchell to take on the captaincy job.
“That was very tough, real tough. Because Whopper [Mackintosh] still wanted to come back,” Mitchell said.
“It was a weird situation going on there and then Hoani asked me to be captain, and at the start I wasn’t very comfortable with it. Especially taking over his reins.
“Like I say, Whopper was still keen to come back and I’m not really too sure what the ins and outs were going on there.
“[We are] great mates. I lived with him quite a bit… I have a lot of respect for Whopper, he looked after me really well through my career.
“It was a hard one. In the end, Whopper was very, very good about it. He was like; ‘you’ve got an opportunity to be captain of your province, get into it mate, you’ve got nothing to lose’.
“Apart from losing every game of the year,” Mitchell said, poking a little bit of fun at himself about his run as captain.
Southland won two of 10 in Mitchell’s first season as captain before losing all 10 the next season
“My success as a captain wasn’t that great, to be honest,” Mitchell told the What A Lad podcast.
If the challenge of replacing such a strong Southland rugby personality wasn’t difficult enough, doing it in a team that was struggling for results in a proud province was even tougher.
“We were probably going through that transition of that golden era of the Stags, and what they had done, to a new sort of era.
“It was tough. Everyone in Southland knows each other, and it is tough to face the public and be the face of the team that the province is so proud of.
“Everyone loves the Stags down there and it does take a bit of a toll. At the end of the day the people down there - win or lose - still love the Stags and they still get behind you.”
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Hoani Macdonald himself also opened up on a previous What A Lad podcast episode about that decision to show Mackintosh the door at the Stags in 2016.
“Looking back, I didn’t handle that as well as I could have with my coaching age,” Macdonald said.
“I don’t know if I got it 100% right or handled the aftermath right. I definitely didn’t handle the conversation with Jamie well.
“It was awkward because he was such a good mate, a really good mate. I played so much rugby with Whopper and just to have that conversation, it was tough.”
Macdonald said Mackintosh did so much as a leader within the Stags team and Macdonald, as a new coach, felt he probably took that for granted at the time.
But on the flip side, Macdonald believed no one else was growing as a leader because they were so reliant on Mackintosh. That was one of the reasons for deciding to move on without Mackintosh, he said.
“I don’t know that I got that 100% right, and you learn from those situations… A lot of people thought it was about Jamie as a person, but it was never about Jamie as a person.
“It was about what I thought was going to be right for the program at that stage. That’s where I might have been naive in thinking other boys were ready to step up into the void he had left behind. It was massive, he was Mr Stag,” Macdonald said.
“It was tough, and I still think about it now.”
Macdonald said Mitchell did a good job replacing Mackintosh with the tools he had to work with.
“Me as a head coach probably didn’t set him up as well as I could have too. Thinking back, we had a really young and inexperienced team, and it was pretty tough on Scratch [Mitchell].”
Mackintosh has also previously talked about how hard it was when he was told his time with the Southland Stags had come to an end before he wanted it to.
“I was sitting in a pub in America, I hung up the phone and I burst into tears. I felt like everything had been taken away from me because I expected to be back there.
“I was pretty upset at the time, but everything teaches you a lesson. Rugby players can become a bit self-entitled and you sort of expect things. I thought no matter what happened in my life I’d be able to go back and play for Southland.’’
All three of the cast in this story are now coaching rugby at different levels.
Mitchell coached Star to a Galbraith Shield title in Southland this year, Macdonald is an assistant coach with Tasman in the NPC, and Mackintosh is a highly regarded forwards coach with the Hurricanes.
Mackintosh was an assistant coach in the All Blacks XV setup for the recent overseas tour.