Reproduced with permission from Whiff of Cordite
WITH EACH PASSING day it seems more and more inevitable that Joe Schmidt will be the next Ireland head coach.
He appears willing to stay the extra year up until the end of the 2015 World Cup, and Leinster have given him their blessing, and assured him they won’t stand in his way.
Brian O’Driscoll helpfully leaked that he might stay on if Schmidt gets the nod, and there is no other obvious contender already under the IRFU umbrella.
As an appointment, it makes sense on any number of levels. Schmidt’s credentials as head coach are impeccable. Having delivered back-to-back Heineken Cups for Leinster, his ability to win silverware needs no embellishment on these pages. Not only did he win with Leinster, however, he had the team playing with a swashbuckling, attack-minded and risk-taking style that was at odds with the bish-bash-bosh fodder offered up by most teams around them.
When Schmidt arrived, he stated his goal of making Leinster the best passing team in Europe. It seemed an odd thing to say about a backline made up entirely of thoroughbread internationals, but he has been true to his word. Players speak of learning something new every day at training, and Shane Horgan has described Schmidt’s conviction in how the game should be played.
He would surely bring the very thing that Kidney’s tenure ran out of in its later period — a clearly defined playing identity and attacking gameplan. Kidney’s Ireland for the most part proved themselves an organised defensive unit, and were particularly effective in executing choke tackle turnovers, but it never appeared to the outsider that attack with ball in hand received the same attention.
Joe Schmidt, a Kiwi back himself in his playing days, lives and breathes attacking rugby, and his expertise is in sourcing and exploiting space on the rugby pitch. His coaching style is based on improving accuracy with an emphasis on repetitions of moves until they become ingrained in the muscle memory. When Luke Fitzgerald ran the length of the pitch to score against Bath, the space had been created for him because the passes to get the ball across the openside of the pitch were all at chest height in front of the catcher – nothing more complicated than that.
Whether he can transfer that accuracy to test level remains to be seen. Will his working methods transfer across to the international game where he sees the players less often, and muscle memory is less easy to build up? One thing’s for sure – the IRFU will continue to assist him as they did Kidney with mid-season training camps, where he can take his players out of their provincial environments for a week.
Baggage
If there is a wrinkle, it’s that Schmidt – like Kidney – has arrived with a certain amount of provincial baggage. It’s reasonable to argue that this shouldn’t matter, and that the best man for the job is the best man for the job, but in an era where support and enthusiasm for Team Ireland is at a low ebb, the fact that Schmidt will be seen by many as Leinster-affiliated will do little to unify a fragmented support base, and is something the IRFU should be aware of.
But as seen in the early days of Kidney’s tenure, this can be overcome – only temporarily, however – by posting winning results. It’s also worth noting that at Leinster he had a squad that bought into his vision for the game, which enabled him to hit the ground running. Munster have had a difficult season adjusting to a style that doesn’t seem to fit, but then again the international contingent have been their stand-out players this year – the best players have the ability to adapt and thrive.
Pic INPHO/Billy Stickland
Hints as to what Schmidt’s coaching team will look like have been thin on the ground, but Kiss and Smal should be thanked for their time and moved on. Fresh voices are the order of the day, and with Schmidt already familiar to the Leinster players in his squad, he should be looking to bring in at least one new voice. With Schmidt an expert on back play, it’s hard to see how Les Kiss would retain anything like the significant role he had as Kidney’s right-hand man.
The only leftover from the previous regime should be Axel Foley. It makes sense to retain a young and well regarded Irish coach on the ticket, and would help to smooth over the Leinster-Munster divide somewhat.
How Ulster will feel about that is an interesting question, but the reality is that it’s the Leinster-Munster relationship that is the woodworm inside the edifice of Irish rugby — the irrationality and bitterness of the relationship was captured in Cite-gate last week . All rugby fans on the island will be hoping Schmidt’s Ireland can forge an identity of their own, a Team Ireland that fans can stand behind, playing rugby that they can be proud of, and (hopefully) bringing home silverware with the same frequency that the provinces do.
