Former rugby league star Phil Blake is set to be unveiled as a new assistant coach for the Queensland Reds in 2023.
It’s understood the Reds have signed Blake, 58, to fill the hole left by the mid-year departure of defence coach Michael Todd, who has linked with Edinburgh.
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Blake is a dual code achiever. While he made his name as a bold, try-scoring backline figure in more than 250 games in the NSWRL, ARL and Super League during the 1980s and ‘90s, his coaching mark has been in rugby union.
He coached most recently in this year’s Shute Shield in NSW where he initiated marked improvement in Manly. He turned them into a finals side with 10 wins after the famous club spluttered to just two wins from nine games in last year’s COVID-shortened club competition.
He toured Europe as defence and skills coach for the Wallabies in late 2010 under Robbie Deans before a stint in the same role with the Western Force.
He was part of a three-coach coalition which guided the club for the second half of the 2012 Super Rugby season after the exit of Richard Graham.
A head coaching stint with the North Harbour Rays in the now-defunct National Rugby Championship and defence roles in England with Leicester Tigers and Wasps are also on his CV. Club roles with Sydney University (2021) and Manly (2022) have kept him current.
He is one of the few football figures who played at as many clubs as Reds coach Brad Thorn, who was a rugby league opponent in the mid-1990s.
Blake played for six clubs before the birth of the NRL and came off the bench for his State of Origin appearance for NSW in 1989.
