Japan-bound Mike Blair has revealed he got his offer to be Dave Rennie’s attack coach at Kobe Steelers via an online WhatsApp chat group.
Blair made the surprise announcement in February that he would stand down as Edinburgh head coach at the end of the 2022-23 season.
The former Scotland scrum-half worked under Rennie when the New Zealander was Glasgow Warriors head coach.
“We’ve still got a WhatsApp group with that coaching team,” said Blair, 42.
“Dave was getting some abuse for losing his job with Australia and one of the guys, John Manson, said, ‘you’ll be off to Japan then’. And I jokingly said, ‘if you fancy taking an attack coach, I’m in’.
“He actually messaged me separately and said, ‘Mike, are you actually interested?’ So I said, ‘oh geez, yeah!'”
Blair will begin work in August as Kobe Steelers look to regain the Japanese title after Saitama Wild Knights took the crown last year.
The Scot insists he had no idea where he would be heading next when he explained in February that he wished to develop into “a world class attack coach”.
“The decision I made back in February to not continue the job with Edinburgh as head coach opened up a few opportunities, so it wasn’t massively planned as such,” he told BBC Scotland’s Sportsound when explaining how the new job came about.
“I didn’t really go looking for opportunities. I didn’t want to rush into doing anything and then this fell in our lap.
“And, when the family started thinking about it, we thought what a great opportunity for us as a family and pushing my coaching career as well.”
Blair is “excited” to team up with Rennie, who he regards as the best coach he has worked with along with Scotland’s Gregor Townsend, and also “get out of my comfort zone”, considering he has only spent three years of his career outside of his homeland.
“We are going to have a really strong squad and it’s a brilliant level,” he added. “Probably about five or six years ago, you saw a lot of New Zealanders, South Africans and Australians going over there in the twilight of their career and picking up good money and not playing a huge amount.
“But now you are seeing world class players playing there and developing. There’s an amazing pool of players there and, as an attack coach, the way that they play the game there – ball in play a lot, really exciting – is something I am really looking forward to as well.”
