Mike Blair opens up WhatsApp joke behind Japan move and desire to escape Scottish Rugby ‘comfort zone’

Mike Blair has revealed that a desire to leave the "comfort zone" of Scottish Rugby was a driving factor in his move to Japan following his decision to quit Edinburgh.

Blair announced back in February that he was to stand down as head coach of the capital side at the end of the season in order to focus on becoming a "world-class attack coach" and he views the move to Kobe Steelers as the next step on that journey.

The 42-year-old former Scotland scrum-half has been named as an assistant to Dave Rennie, who was appointed as head coach of the Japanese club last month following a three-year spell in charge of Australia.

Blair also coached under Rennie at Glasgow Warriors between 2017 and 2019 and is looking forward to teaming up with him again on the other side of the world after revealing the job offer originated from a jokey conversation on WhatsApp.

Former Edinburgh head coach Mike Blair has been appointed assistant coach at Japanese side Kobe Steelers. (Photo by Ross Parker / SNS Group)

"It's been in the pipeline for a while," Blair told Sportsound. "The decision I made to not continue the job with Edinburgh as head coach opened up a few opportunities. It was a funny one with Dave because he was head coach at Glasgow when I was coaching there and we've still got a WhatsApp group where that coaching team are together. Dave was getting some abuse for losing his job with Australia and one of the guys, John Mansen, said, 'oh, you'll be off to Japan, then'. And I jokingly said, 'well, if you fancy taking an attack coach I'm in'. He actually messaged me separately and said, 'Mike, are you actually interested?' It was 'oh jeez... yeah!'

"It wasn't massively planned as such. I didn't really go looking for opportunities. I waited to see what was going on. I didn't want to rush into doing anything and then this fell in our lap. We started thinking about it and thought what a great opportunity it was for us as a family and for pushing my coaching career on as well.

"From a rugby side we're going to have a really strong squad and the opportunity to work with Dave again, who alongside Gregor Townsend are the best head coaches I've worked with, that's really exciting as well."

Blair insists the opportunity to work at a "brilliant level" with players he has never coached before is appealing – along with the desire to test himself outwith Scotland.

"Part of it is getting me out of my comfort zone," he said. "I've been back with Scottish Rugby since 2015, seven years coaching, one year playing, and prior to that I was at Edinburgh from birth until I was 31. I've only really been away from Scotland for three years, one year in Brieve and two in Newcastle. There's great comfort in that, and having family around, but I've known a lot of the players for a long time. Part of coaching is finding the key to unlock a player's potential. Getting to know players and building a bond with them. I think to test that you've got to go somewhere where you don't know people. You have to start again from scratch and be able to put your opinion over and get them to buy into that. That's going to be really important for me."