It may have taken 27 years, seven different clubs and three very painful grand final losses, but Sydney Roosters coach Brian Smith has finally found peace in his often turbulent rugby league world.

On the cusp of finally clasping his hands on the NRL's holy grail, Smith cuts a figure so calm you could be forgiven for thinking Sunday's grand final is a gimme.

It's a far cry from the Smith many in rugby league circles have come to know - a man so intense that at times you feared for his wellbeing.

Not any more - and it all comes down to his new surrounds in a job many thought he was crazy to accept.

"For me, I'm cool, I'm confident, but I need to show that a bit more and I think I've been better at that for this group of people," Smith told AAP.

"I'm aware that I need to show that, I need to show more of what I feel.

"It's a whole heap easier when you've got a group like this."

The `group like this' he refers to is a club which last year was the laughing stock of the league and the source of a constant migraine for NRL boss David Gallop.

The Roosters lurched from one off-field atrocity to the next, one bad performance to another, and it was no surprise to see them end the year with the wooden spoon and a player cleanout imminent.

Enter Smith - who claims he felt the winds of change in his first meetings with players last October.

But to understand the transformation the club has gone through under his tutelage, you need to fast-forward to the semi-final win over Penrith just over a week ago, which came after a hectic month of football.

"After we'd played Penrith our guys were stuffed, they were tired," Smith said.

"We'd won some big games that we had to win to make the playoffs, stay in the race, 100 minutes, extra time, the whole bit.

"(Assistant coach Ciriaco Mescia) came up with a work schedule for the next week and it was Sunday recovery at 11. Eleven? At other clubs I've been at - and a lot of clubs still have the problem - you hold recovery at 11 and that's like a licence on a Saturday to go nuts.

"So you have your recovery at nine so that blokes go to bed earlier - but that's dumb, because when you finish a game like that, they're pumped up after a game and most of them can't get to sleep until two or three.

"They need six to eight hours' sleep and that takes them to 10 o'clock. That's what they should be having and we should be trusting them to do that and we do.

"Then there's the rest of Sunday off, Monday off, Tuesday off - the next time we meet is Wednesday. In the golden days, that's a three-day bender.

"When you get that, by Wednesday you can't do anything sharp ... they've actually undone all the stuff that you wanted to achieve by relaxing.

"Instead of that, our group arrives on Wednesday jumping out of their skins ready to do the short, sharp session we had planned.

"When you get that, you can go a long way fast - that's why I'm relaxed.

"That's trust. They build it up over the course of the year, but it all started in those first interviews when they told me what they felt, what they hated, what they didn't want any more, what they did want - they just needed direction on it."

And that's what Smith has delivered as he continues to strive for the ultimate success.

Say what you want about the man, but you have to admire his perseverance.

Three times he has got to this stage and fallen short.

Each time he has run into an opponent which even he admits was far superior.

In 1992-93, Brisbane boasted a line-up which could go down as one of the greatest club sides ever assembled, the likes of Allan Langer, Steve Renouf, Glenn Lazarus and the Walters brothers Kevin and Kerrod twice tormenting Smith's Dragons.

In 2001, when he was with Parramatta, it was a rampant Andrew Johns alongside Danny Buderus, Ben Kennedy and Matt Gidley that got Newcastle home.

They are the painful memories that still drive Smith, but you have to go back even further to find his true coaching inspiration, back to his first job at the Illawarra Steelers where he started in 1984.

Twice in that four-year span the Steelers finished with the wooden spoon - and Smith's love of coaching was born.

"I look back on those days as offering some steely resolve - I understood that it wasn't going to be a bowl of cherries," Smith said.

"I would recommend it - in fact, my judgement on young coaches when I see them doing well, I'm thinking `you haven't worked it out yet, you don't know whether you want to be a coach yet'.

"You never really know that you want to be a coach until you turn the TV on, put the DVD in - or in those days the video - it's three in the morning and you've only been asleep for a little while and you come to the realisation that this team you're watching cannot possibly ever win another game while ever you are the coach.

"That's when you know whether you really want to coach."

So, after 27 years, does the fire still burn for Smith?

"You bet, I wouldn't want to be doing anything else."

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