Scots have given the world many things. We are responsible for the telephone, the refrigerator, the flushing toilet, the ATM, the MRI scanner, penicillin and the television. We have made pioneering contributions to science, technology and communication, and the unique culinary delight of stuffing a sheep’s stomach with its own mashed organs and serving it with potatoes and turnips. Well, you wouldn’t want to waste any of the good stuff, would you? We are a nation of adventurers, trailblazers, creators, innovators and tinkerers. Our little country has punched above its weight in so many senses.

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In professional rugby, though, Scotland haven’t exactly been influencers. If the Springboks and the All Blacks are at rugby’s TikTok-dancing, iced coffee-drinking, live streaming cutting edge, until about 10 years ago we were still using dial-up internet and hoping nobody needed the landline phone at the same time.

There have been isolated success stories. Richie Gray (not that one) has become a sought-after contact expert with his Collision King tech. Jim Telfer and Ian McGeechan were decades ahead of their time. Telfer was famously shaped by his experiences as a player in New Zealand. And today, Gregor Townsend has completely transformed how people perceive Scottish rugby.

But when I was growing up, if you’d have suggested the first foreign New Zealand coach would be a Scot, you’d be more concerned with the men in white coats than the rugby players in all black.

Yet here we are, Mike Blair, my old teammate, roommate and captain, is helping restore the All Blacks’ DNA. There is nobody more credible, and nobody more worthy of this prestigious role with the way he thinks about the game and operates on so many levels.

It’s a little galling that Mike will be in the opposition coaching box when New Zealand resume their Nations Championship campaign at Murrayfield this Saturday. He began his formal coaching journey at the end of his playing career with Townsend’s Glasgow. He stayed on and worked under Dave Rennie for the next few seasons, before stepping up to coach with Townsend at Scotland. The two senior men are Mike’s biggest mentors. It will be an odd dynamic for him helping one against the other come Saturday.

Mike took on his first head coach job at Edinburgh four years ago in rushed circumstances, and found himself drowned by the cloying, relentless demands of the job. The paperwork, the admin, the scouting, the contracting, the negotiations, the media duties. We would often exchange texts about his signing targets in the Top 14, where I’d spent the bulk of my club career, just as we’d pick apart the Test matches we competed in together for Scotland during the late 2000s.

Mike needed a managerial figure at his side to clear all the off-field detritus from his in-tray. He needed support and it was too late in coming to keep him in the job.

The burden of the role – effectively a head coach and director of rugby wrapped in one – would affect anyone who was coming into it so fresh. Mike wanted to coach. Specifically, he yearned to be a world-class attack coach. That’s where he felt he could make the biggest impact. He needed a managerial figure at his side to clear all the off-field detritus from his in-tray. He needed support and it was too late in coming to keep him in the job.

Scotland lost an incredible rugby brain and a brilliant human. Could we have nurtured him differently? We have only two professional teams and limited opportunities for young, home-grown coaches to develop. Mike’s departure sparked a wider conversation: how can we encourage, develop and get the best from those coaches coming through the pathway? Our reservoir of talent is not huge and we cannot afford to squander what we have.

The incestuous nature of coaching took Mike to Japan and Kobe with Rennie, and then to New Zealand and this incredible opportunity. He returns to Scotland steering the biggest brand in rugby, with the most dominant all-time win percentage, in the capacity for which he always felt designed.

I’ve been friends with Mike for nearly 20 years. He is highly intelligent, very witty, and a straight-shooting, clean-living kind of guy. His pre-match ritual typically involved throwing up, though I’d like to think he won’t be redecorating the away changing room at Murrayfield come 2pm. He is, unfortunately, incredibly tight with money but he had a flair for sport that was All Black-esque in nature. He even dominated our in-house ping-pong tournaments.

The French would say ‘il pue de rugby’ – Mike stinks of rugby. He was the first one to start the games of touch during our warm-ups because he loved the sport so much. His ability to create space and bring other people around him into the game was amazing. He was wicked with ball in hand. He had fabulous service from the base. And he could shift his eyes and warp his body to show a picture to a defender and manipulate them a certain way. One of the only players I’ve seen capable of similar was Joe Rokocoko, the great All Blacks wing I played against in the Top 14, who told me how Joe Schmidt coached him to twist and deceive with his body shape.

People underestimated how athletic Mike was too. He’d wear a medium jersey and it would look like a 3XL because he didn’t enjoy the gym. But he was naturally extremely strong given his slight physique. He was rapid, never missed a tackle, utterly committed and engaged and dogged in defence. And he could jackal.

Scotland has always produced these nuggety scrum-halves – Roy Laidlaw, Gary Armstrong, Bryan Redpath, Chris Cusiter, Greig Laidlaw – who relished that side of the game. Mike may not have looked like a ‘junkyard dog’, but he threw himself into the rough stuff just as willingly.

His achievements as a player speak for themselves (85 caps, 14 as captain, and a Lions tour) but the context is important. Mike wasn’t playing in a swaggering Test side competing for honours. He managed to become a truly world-class scrum-half at a time Scotland were playing some pretty grim rugby. He was one of very few players from our old side who could have been plugged into the New Zealand team and flourished. Nobody would have batted an eyelid. I have no doubt that if he was raised in Auckland or Christchurch instead of Edinburgh, he’d have been an All Black.

Today, given the advancement in how we attack, retain and use the ball, he would be even better thought of. Some guys would cut through generations – Brian O’Driscoll, Austin Healey, Richie McCaw – through their ability but you can also tell by how they speak, they’d be on-field generals no matter when they played. Mike is in that category.

Twenty-one years ago. Tana Umaga’s last Test.

A lovely flourish of class from Mike Blair – a footballer whose vision and skillset was All Black-esque – to set Sean Lamont galloping away, only to be reeled in by Tana.

Blair and Umaga in the ABs coaching box back here next week. https://t.co/RBb2sNMoFI

— Jamie Lyall (@JLyall93) October 29, 2026

Nine Tests into the Rennie era, Mike’s fingerprints are already plastered across New Zealand’s resurgence. They look more like the All Blacks my generation grew up idolising – unbelievable precision in how they play, creativity, vision and breakneck pace. The edge they’d lost under the previous coaching regimes has returned. They’ve found their mojo again. And Mike has been the architect in chief.

During the Greatest Rivalry series, they landed blows on the Springboks playing their traditional All Black style. They only came unstuck when South Africa reverted to type, rolled up their sleeves and did the route one stuff no-one can match.

There have been so many elements of Mike’s detailed coaching. New Zealand are mixing up their attacking pod structure, creating different puzzles for defences to solve. Previously, they’d become too readable. The All Blacks have players who can make decisions under pressure at the highest level and create mayhem. That’s what I’d associate with New Zealand rugby. And there’s a real sense of pride that Mike is bringing that back: a shinier, more polished, entertaining version of the All Blacks.

Someday, maybe not too far into the future, Mike could be in the home coaching box at Murrayfield. Gregor Townsend is expected to move on after the World Cup, and Mike would be a glaringly obvious target, if it’s something he’d want to pursue, and something that would suit his family. Franco Smith might have something to say about that. And there’s Clark Laidlaw, too, another Scot who has taken New Zealand by storm first with the men’s sevens side, and this year leading the Super Rugby champion Hurricanes.

From my vantage point on the TV gantry this weekend, it will be weird to glance along to my right and see Mike in the away booth, wearing a black suit and a silver fern, rather than a blue one embossed with the thistle. It will also fill me with pride.