'There'll be some emotion, for sure' - Schmidt soaks up return to Ireland

AT 3PM TODAY in a south Dublin hotel, Joe Schmidt entered the room and sat before a group of Irish media. He smiled and shook hands as he registered “some familiar faces.”

The last time had been Dublin Airport in 2019. He wasn’t long off a plane that had started its journey in Japan, where Ireland’s World Cup had come to a crushing end at the hands of the All Blacks. Safe to say, that short debrief in arrivals wasn’t a pleasant conversation for the New Zealander.

Irish Rugby trucked along without him and Schmidt did the same. He landed into a new job at World Rugby but the coaching itch was still there. In 2022 he joined the All Blacks as an assistant coach, while purposely keeping a low profile and avoiding any media duty. If that move to New Zealand wasn’t exactly a shock, what followed next was. Earlier this year Australia Rugby announced Schmidt as the Wallabies’ new head coach, tasked with picking through the pieces of the mess left by Eddie Jones.

The job has not been without its challenges but Schmidt appears to be enjoying it. In Australia he’s been dubbed ‘Genial Joe’ – a side of Schmidt we rarely saw towards the latter end of his coaching career here.

It was fascinating to watch ‘Genial Joe’ work the crowd today, sprinkling some jokes into his answers as he reflected on his past, present and future in rugby.

His daughter still lives in these parts and Schmidt reckons he’s “probably one of the few loss-making landlords in Dublin.”

He raises his eyebrows when Johnny Sexton’s book is mentioned, and revelations the former Ireland out-half still had Schmidt’s voice in his head right up until the end of this playing career: “Jeez, I feel sorry for him!”

Every now and then, the Schmidt we were more familiar with reared his head. His recall remains astonishing. A question about Cian Healy’s longevity starts with Schmidt’s memories of a younger Healy’s ability in the gym and ends with a detailed run-through of a moment from Leinster’s Heineken Cup semi-final win away to Clermont in 2012: “We played a set play with Isaac Boss going around the back, the pass from Richardt Strauss going to Rob Kearney; there’s Cian on his shoulder trying to overtake him!”

The full chat is delivered with a warm smile. Later, some of his Australia players will tell us they’ve been struck by how excited Schmidt was to return to Ireland this week. The man himself admits to being ‘overwhelmed’ from the minute he got off the plane.

“I feel comfortable here,” says Schmidt, who became an Irish citizen in 2015.

“We didn’t train yesterday so it gave me a bit of a chance to catch up with a few old friends and new foes.”

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There is a plan to meet Andy Farrell for a coffee either this evening or at some point tomorrow. Both have been important figures in the 150-year history of the IRFU, which will be marked by Saturday’s game in Dublin. 

Schmidt is asked to reflect on his own role in that history.

“I think what you want to leave is a legacy that people are enthusiastic about the game. As much as anything that the success that has allowed interest to grow and the playing population to grow. And the health of clubs. I’m just going to catch up with people from Old Wesley, I’ll drop into Terenure while I’m back.

“I just love the fact that the sport is not just flourishing at the top end, but we’ve been really well hosted by Wanderers the last couple of days in training.

“It’s always a multi-faceted thing, a multi-contributory thing. A lot of people were putting a lot of effort in to help make the game more accessible and also make it more successful at the top end.”

The 2019 World Cup was a sorry end to what had been a golden era for the team that Joe built. Three Six Nations wins, one Grand Slam and historic victories against New Zealand and South Africa cemented his legacy, but the full stop was a 32-point World Cup quarter-final defeat.

Andy Farrell has done a superb job in lifting Ireland back to impressive heights, yet Schmidt’s influence hasn’t faded. Seven of Farrell’s starting XV on Saturday made their Test debuts under Schmidt. Earlier this week, forwards coach Paul O’Connell revealed the group still reference some of his coaching around their breakdown work.

Yet Farrell has also made this team his own. Key men like Caelan Doris, Hugo Keenan, Dan Sheehan and James Lowe all pushed through under his watch. So too Jamison Gibson-Park, who Farrell capped in 2020 before the scrum-half had made himself first choice at Leinster.

Schmidt is asked how this Ireland team’s style of play differs to the squad he left in 2019, and quickly points to the tempo Gibson-Park offers the team.

I think they’re not that different. Jamison Gibson-Park gives them so much speed in how quickly he arrives and lifts the ball and distributes it at the breakdown.

“I know it’s something that Conor (Murray) could do for us, but we probably used Conor’s kicking game a little bit more. Not that Jamison has a bad kicking game, it’s just that people tend to play to their strengths, and then as a coach you’re trying to maximise the strengths you have in the team.

“And a big part of it was talking to the players and seeing how they wanted to play, see how they felt they were capable of best playing and it’s been the same with the Wallabies.”

His first year running the Wallabies has been challenging one. By full-time in Dublin Schmidt will have capped 19 new players across his first 13 games. There have been painful moments along the way – shipping 67 points away to the Pumas and enduring heavy defeat to the Springboks and New Zealand – but November has brought fresh hope, with their high-octane triumph in Twickenham a season high-point.

Those bumps in the road have not been cause for panic. The recovery from the Jones era was never going to be easy and the driving aim remains having a competitive, healthy team in place for next year’s Lions tour.

Schmidt acknowledges the job is a tough one.

I feel like I’m paddling hard, but I’m not necessarily going forward. But I think we’re keeping our head above water. We’ve demonstrated that we can be competitive with some really top teams.

“We have slipped off in a couple of second halves, which is frustrating but at the same time we’re trying to build to 80-minute performances, and we’re trying to build depth so that if we get a ripple like we did last week (against Scotland), that we can still try and stay on top of the water.

“We were quite confident in the progress we were making, but sometimes when it’s not reflected on scoreboard results there is always an element of frustration.

“The other thing, we just wanted to raise the profile and the excitement around the game (in Australia). We’ve had some really super messaging during this tour from people at home, really supporting the team.

“That’s a little bit of encouragement because it was really flat this time last year… The players were quite fractured at the start. I didn’t really know them at the start. I didn’t really know the staff. There were only two staff from the year before, so it’s been a complete makeover. We’re still getting to know each other, really.”

He knows plenty of the men who will be wearing green on Saturday. He describes Ireland’s 2022 tour to New Zealand – his first encounter in the opposition coaching box – as “the most bizarre coaching experience I think I’ve ever had.” Some Ireland players have said last year’s quarter-final loss to the All Blacks, which had Schmidt’s fingerprints all over it, still keeps them up at night. 

This week will provide it’s own story as Schmidt returns back to the Aviva for the first time.

“There will be apprehension because I have that every week! I even have it before training; ‘Geez, i hope we don’t break someone today, I hope the boys get some confidence and some rhythm here today!’

“So I try to be pretty transactional, pretty pragmatic on game day, but there’ll be some emotion in it for me, for sure.”