Ian Smith has played and coached rugby all over the world but his roots remain very firmly in Gloucester.

So much so that he still keeps in touch with many of the players who started out on the same rugby journey as him at age group level with Longlevens.

Smith, the tenacious openside flanker who played for Gloucester for 15 years after making his debut in 1982, remembers those days like they were yesterday.

“Derek Cook was our coach and he took us all the way through from the age of 10 or 11,” said Smith. “We won the County Cup at under-15 and under-17 level before moving into the senior team.

“With Derek it wasn’t just about the coaching. He understood the values of the game. He understood young people and sold the game to us.

“I still see him today and he’s held in such high regard.

“I helped to organise an 80th birthday party for him last year at Longlevens and of the 18 or 19 players who he brought through, 14 or 15 turned up including the likes of Pete Jones and Marcus Hannaford.”

Smith’s rugby education was not confined just to Longlevens, however.

His dad, Richard ‘Dick’ Smith, also a number seven, was captain of Gloucester in the 1970s and Smith junior remembers: “We used to play on the Tump at Kingsholm. The Tump was a strip of grass at the top of some concrete steps behind the posts where the corporate boxes are today.

“We used to play rugby there on Saturday afternoons and when there was a game under the floodlights on Wednesdays.

“Andy Stanley and Bobby Fowke both used to play and it was a great learning experience. We used to have chicken scratch scrums and because we used to play against older kids it was good for skill acquisition.”

Rugby was soon a major part of Smith’s life. Some weekends he’d play for Sir Thomas Rich’s School on Saturday morning, then Longlevens 1sts or 2nds in the afternoon before playing for the under-17s on a Sunday.

Smith admitted that playing for the Longlevens senior teams at the age of 16 and 17 could be tough.

“It was daunting to start with because we were playing against men,” he said, “but we enjoyed it. We played with some good people and they looked after us.”

Smith did not start playing in the back row until he was 14 or 15. Up until then he had always played in the centre.

“In the end I got bored playing centre,” he explained. “I got fed up with the forwards who wouldn’t give us the ball when we wanted it so I wanted to play where I could get the ball myself.

“I suppose I became a frustrated centre. I wasn’t quite quick enough to play there so I got the ball in hand and used my skills to get them into space.”

After a couple of seasons in the Longlevens first team Smith decided to give it a go at Gloucester.

In those days academies were but a distant pipedream and Smith explained: “You simply had to back yourself. Every player had to decide for themselves whether they wanted to try to play for Gloucester because there were no invitations.

“It sifted the players who were prepared to give it a go. It was quite an ordeal and you needed a different mind-set.

“Pete Jones and I went together and we kept our mouths shut and our heads down.

“We had a few opportunities and it was something I always wanted to do. I suppose being privy to what went on when my dad was captain made me aware of the kudos of playing for Gloucester but it was mentally and physically hard.”

The young Smith must have been doing something right, however, because at the age of 18 he was given his first chance in the first team.

But after getting the call, things took a dramatic turn for the worse.

Smith takes up the story: “It was at Rosslyn Park on a Wednesday night. I’d just come on as a replacement when their prop jumped on our hooker Kevin White.

“I assumed everybody would just fly in but I was just a bit too quick with my punches and me and the prop were sent off.

“My dad was Gloucester’s coach at the time and fortunately he wasn’t at the game because he was on holiday. I tried to keep my sending off from him but he soon found out and wasn’t impressed.”

Smith learned quickly from that indiscretion – he was never sent off in his career again – and the incident was quickly forgotten.

He pretty soon became an established figure in the Cherry and Whites’ back row alongside two other Gloucester giants, Mike Teague and John Gadd.

“We played together for the best part of 10 years,” said Smith. “We had a good team in those days. When I started I was playing with the likes of Phil Blakeway, Steve Mills, Gordon Sargeant, Steve Boyle and John Orwin.

“Then players like Malcolm Preedy and John Brain came through and it was a good era to be playing.

“Sadly in those days the club had no succession plan when recruiting. The club would just wait to see who turned up in the summer and it was very difficult to replace like with like.”

The end of the 1989-90 season marked the beginning of the end for a number of Gloucester stalwarts.

It was a campaign that had promised so much but was to end in crushing disappointment.

Smith remembers: “We were chasing the league and cup double. The league was between us and Wasps. We’d been leading but we blew it at Nottingham and Wasps won the title.

“The following weekend it was the cup final at Twickenham against Bath. While we’d been battling for the league they’d been resting up.

“We were shattered and Gaddy getting sent off didn’t help. Had that game been played now or even a few years later we’d have had a bit more rotation.

“We pretty much played the same side every week. Some players were carrying knocks but the club felt they deserved to play at Twickenham.”

Gloucester’s 48-6 defeat is in the history books forever but Smith and his team-mates on that day have done their best to erase it from their memories.

“The cup final is something we never talk about,” he said. “When we meet up it’s never mentioned. The manner of the defeat left us feeling as though we’d let ourselves, the fans and the city down and what made it worse was it was against Bath.

“We were two wins away from the best ever season in Gloucester’s history but those two defeats changed everything and showed the fine margins in sport.

“I remember looking round the changing room after the Nottingham defeat at the likes of Gadd, Brain, Preedy and [Mike] Hamlin and thinking this was probably their last chance to win the league. It was a pretty sombre moment.”

Smith was at the forefront as Gloucester looked to replace several of their past heroes, captaining the club for three years in the early 1990s.

It was a period of stabilisation for the club as new players such as Kevin Dunn, John Hawker, Dave Sims, Richard West, Pete Glanville, Simon Devereux, Andy Deacon, Tony Windo and Neil Mathews looked to establish themselves.

“There were a lot of changes but they were good lads coming through,” said Smith. “I enjoyed my first season as captain and much of the second although we struggled towards the end.

“I was determined to put my name forward for a third season and see it through and after that I was ready to hand it over and concentrate on my own game.”

By now Smith had already had his first taste of international rugby – and he wanted more.

Although born and bred In Gloucester and being part of England’s enlarged squad before the 1991 World Cup, it was Scotland who came calling.

“I remember getting a phone call from Ian McGeechan saying he wanted me to play for the Scottish Exiles and Scotland B,” said Smith. “I thought it was Jim Breeze messing about and said ‘yeah, yeah’ before McGeechan convinced me it really was him.”

Smith was eligible to play for Scotland through his grandparents on his father’s side. “I always wanted to play for Scotland,” he said, “from the days of watching the Five Nations sat on my grandfather’s knee.”

Smith played a few Scotland B games before getting his chance with the Five Nations squad at the start of the 1992 campaign.

“Pete Jones and I had been preparing for the tournament for weeks,” Smith said. “We used to play for Gloucester on the Saturday and then head to Heathrow to catch the 8,40pm plane to Edinburgh.

“We’d then train on Sunday morning and then catch the 2.40pm plane back to Heathrow before going to work on the Monday.

“It was tough but we were honoured just to be given the chance.

“Both Pete and I were due to be on the bench for the opening game against England at Murrayfield.

“The night before the final squad session on the Sunday before the following week’s game there was a small party in Longlevens which Pete and I decided to go to.

“We decided we’d catch an early flight to Edinburgh from Birmingham on Sunday morning. The trouble was that Birmingham was fogbound and the plane was delayed. We were really late and didn’t get to Murrayfield until 11am.

“As we walked across the pitch we saw the chairman of selectors Duncan Patterson coming towards us. He was a bit of a disciplinarian and I said to Pete, ‘We’re in trouble here’.

“As we walked past him he said ‘congratulations’ to me and Pete said, ‘I think you’re playing’.

“It wasn’t until the other players started shaking my hand that I realised that Graham Marshall had picked up an injury and that I was going to win my first cap.”

The game ended in disappointment for Smith as England won 25-7 but he was to win a further 24 caps up to the end of 1997.

“I was very, very fortunate to play as much as I did,” said Smith.

“I went to the World Cup in South Africa in 1995 and toured Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and Argentina.

“I’ve kept in touch with quite a few players – Rob Wainwright, Derek Stark, Doddie Weir and Gregor Townsend.

“In those days it was tough for Scotland because England and France were so strong. It was a huge challenge and you were taking yourself to places you would not normally go.

“As a Gloucester lad, playing for Gloucester was a hell of a thing. Kingsholm was a special place but once you played international rugby it was a different level.”

Smith spent a season with Moseley after leaving Gloucester in 1997 before a serious knee injury brought the curtain down on his playing career.

Not that he ever really left Moseley because head coach Allan Lewis quickly invited him to join his coaching team.

It was the start of a 20-year journey on the other side of the white line for Smith that took in Newport, Hartpury and Cheltenham as well as coaching roles overseas.

He also had a five-month spell back at Gloucester when Nigel Melville first took over as head coach following the departure of Philippe Saint-Andre in the early noughties.

“That was an interesting period,” said Smith. “Pete Glanville was team manager at Gloucester at the time and asked me in the January if I’d help out.

“I knew it was only a short-term thing because Nigel wanted to bring in Dean Ryan who he’d worked with before but I didn’t have a problem with that.

“There was no real structure at the club but the team were doing well so we didn’t change anything and we ended the season by beating Bristol in the Zurich Championship Final at Twickenham.”

That success whetted Smith’s appetite for more and it was not long before he was heading back to Moseley as head coach.

It was a big job and the coaching could not be done by one person. “I needed someone to go in with so that I could hit the ground running,” he recalls. “I’d played with Don Caskie at Gloucester and coached with him at Cheltenham and he was the perfect fit.

“We worked really well together and had a lot of success. It was a trust thing and was very simple. I knew if he said he was going to do something he’d do it. I never had to check.”

Moseley won promotion back to what is now the Championship in Smith’s second season in charge and he guided them to victory in the EDF Energy National Trophy Final when they beat Leeds at Twickenham.

While at Moseley, Smith also helped set up a ground-breaking dual player arrangement with Gloucester that saw future England players Jonny May and Charlie Sharples cut their teeth at the Midlands club.

“It was an incredible journey,” Smith says of his time at Moseley, who he left in 2012.

A chance to work with ex-Scotland head coach Richie Dixon as part of Georgia’s coaching team was the reason for him moving on. He couldn’t commit to a full-time role – Smith is married to Karen with three boys, Sam, Matthew and Robbie – but loved every minute of his time with them.

“The people out there haven’t got a lot but what they have got they give you,” he said. “It was a great life experience.”

From Georgia, Smith moved on to Portugal where he was pretty much in charge of everything from the senior team through to the youth set-up and the women’s section.

He was there for two years and has only just stepped down from the role.

“It was a great job and they are great people,” Smith said. “We put a lot of structures in place but in Portugal funding is a bit of an issue.”

Smith believes Georgia are ready to take the next step up the rugby ladder but is adamant that it should not be at the expense of Italy in the Six Nations.

“It’s difficult but Italy won’t improve if they are out of the Six Nations so rugby’s chiefs need to come up with some ideas to get the teams playing more games. Romania are very close too.”

Smith’s career as a player and a coach may have taken him all over the world but ask him whether he preferred playing or coaching and there is barely a pause before he relies: “Playing all day long.

“You can never replicate playing. Playing is what it is all about, coaching isn’t the same. There’s a remoteness to it and it’s hard work. Yes, it can be hugely satisfying but once that whistle goes you are detached from it.

“As a coach, you are mentally doing it; as a player, you are physically doing it. The game is all about the players.”

Rugby may be all about the players but all teams need a good coach. Ian Smith, who is back home in Gloucester, is not coaching at the moment. He will be back in rugby soon.