Approaching 500 games without a premiership, Newcastle coach Brian Smith has no trouble finding inspiration, writes Andrew Webster.

It follows him like a shadow that lengthens with every match and each season.

A man can measure himself whichever way he sees fit - the size of his house, the horsepower of his car, the notches on his belt - but a coach is never afforded such freedoms.

In the cut and thrust of Football Land, coaches aren't judged by the promises they bring or the hope they spawn. The yardstick is nothing more than the precious commodity of premierships.

At last count, Brian Smith had acquired none.

"I'm well and truly over the fact that others are going to measure me by the number of grand finals I've won," he says. "Even [Wayne] Bennett, who has won all of the ones that he has, doesn't measure himself as a man or a coach by his premierships. He's done truckloads more than that. So has [Tim] 'Sheensy'. Those guys have done way more than just win premierships. In the same way, it's unfair to judge me because I haven't won one, it's unfair to judge them because of the ones they have."

For Smith's detractors, it will be the easiest sledge this weekend as he approaches his 500th game as a first-grade coach. It will be too convenient for them to point out that the only men who have coached more - Bennett and Sheens - have completed victory laps with regularity during their time. Too gorgeously ironic that this milestone, which deserves to be lauded, comes against Parramatta, the club he coached longer than anyone, which lost the 2001 grand final on his watch, before he was told he wasn't wanted beyond 2006.

"On the days I lost them, I ranked them very highly," says Smith, 54. "And the days following. There's no hiding from that. That's what you do it for. But it's only part of what you do it for. Ask any coach. They're not doing it just to win a grand final. They do it because they love footy, they love the environment, they love working with young blokes. All of us have the opportunity to affect those young boys' lives in some ways."

Bennett says: "Every club wants a premiership. But to coach as long as he has without one is remarkable. Not many coaches could survive that long." Sheens says: "If premierships were the only thing you judge coaches by, he wouldn't have a job. He's still in the business, isn't he?"

Smith entered the business in 1984 when he finished up as a PE teacher and joined Illawarra as a 29-year-old. The journey's taken him to Hull, St George, Bradford, Parramatta, Newcastle …

"When I look back on it, I was just living in the moment when I started. Some people find it hard to believe, but nothing's changed. There's been a few times when it's got a little bit different. People say they have no regrets. I've got regrets every week. But essentially I still feel exactly the same: desperate to win this weekend."

Of all his reincarnations, leaving Parramatta seems to have been his most critical. "Some people found me leaving Parramatta mid-season to be the wrong thing to do," he says. "Everybody is entitled to their opinion. But at that point in time, I knew I wasn't the right man for that job. For me to stay there and keep copping the cash …" Smith left for Europe, seeing friends and his brother in the north of England, his youngest son in Berlin and eldest in London. But he spent large slabs of time alone, walking the streets of the big cities, navel-gazing and wondering what it all means.

"It was just dropping out, I needed some time alone. I'm not good at it but I need to do it." Why? "I didn't want to burden anyone else with what I was going through at the time. It was hugely disappointing for me to finish at Parramatta in that way. I really loved my time there. Really loved my time there. And it didn't end how I wanted. For me, it was sad."

But the move was opportune.

It's clear to many, not least Smith, that he's arrived at Newcastle a coach reborn. Stories of his obsessiveness about the result - particularly in the age of text messaging - border on folklore. "But I think I've gotten way better at that. One of my coaching heroes is Bill Walsh." (Walsh was the famous coach of the San Francisco 49ers; Smith is an American football tragic). "There's a story about him going to the movies with his wife. He was a man as well as a footy coach." A rarity. "He's got his arm around his wife and after a little while she slaps him and says, 'Stop doing that.' He was drawing plays on her back. That was me. And probably still is - ask my wife. I'm way better at it. It's not morning, noon and night. I don't do a lot else. But I no longer think about footy all the time."

Yet the game still captivates him. He talks about unlocking the brilliance inside every player. Get him talking about the experiment this season of alternating Kurt Gidley from fullback and dummy-half in attack and defence and his eyes twitch with infectious enthusiasm. "That fires me," he says.

It also provides vindication. When Smith moved Gidley to fullback, they howled in Newcastle about the demise of Milton Thaiday. "Nobody seems to remember that now," he says.

He freely admits he likes proving the critics wrong - on matters of football especially - and that best explains why he's the most maligned man in the code. It would take Phil Gould to come out of retirement to supplant him. Smith doesn't seek friends in the press. (It took some arm-twisting to agree to this interview.) The parallel, on the eve of this milestone, is too tantalising to ignore. Imagine if Brian Smith were still at the helm of the Parramatta side that has bombed this season.

What if Michael Hagan were Brian Smith? "I understand that's how it is," Smith says. "Because I've upset some people, I've become a target. I just treat it like a pantomime. Some people are the goodies, some people are the baddies. And that's the way they generate ratings or sell copies of newspapers. I wish I wasn't the bad guy. But I don't care now. There's nothing I can do."

The most vicious commentary came last year when he engineered sweeping changes at Newcastle, a proud club not used to revolution. "I don't play the games. That's where I'm different to others … I've always treated it as someone else's club and money, and they've put me in this important position to make decisions. And I'm supposed to do that without favouritism and fear. I have fear. Sometimes when you make decisions … you know you're going to cop a hammering from the usual sources. But if I ever don't do that, I have to go. I couldn't live with myself, if I stop making decisions that are unpopular."

Indeed, Smith would've turned it up years ago if he started listening to the critics. As Bennett offers: "You pick up a lot of them in 500 games."

"I would think most people in their lives have to get over way more important things than losing a grand final," Smith says. "Most of my life, I've had disappointments with footy. But when it comes to the real disappointments in a person's life, I've had very few. I've been living a dream - with a few nightmare moments in it - for a very, very long time. Those things hurt, but in perspective they're a pin prick."

The inevitable question of how long he can do this is asked. "No idea," he smiles. "Sometimes I think I'm halfway."