Bokke bokke
Is he the French Pat Mustard
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Battle of Laing’s Nek next Saturday?
RUGBY WORLD CUP | PETER O’REILLY
october 27 2019, 12:01am, the sunday times
Joe Schmidt dropped the ball in Ireland’s Rugby World Cup bid
peter o’reilly
The coach’s fingerprints were all over the campaign in Japan but he has refused to accept culpability for its failure
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Irish rugby fans are surely rooting for Wales this morning. They have enjoyed some good fortune, it’s true — though you can ignore the rumour that Sébastien Vahaamahina is opening a pub in Bridgend. Almost every game they have played has enhanced the tournament as a spectacle. Reaching the last four is a fitting climax to Warren Gatland’s 12-year reign.
Granted, Gatland achieving a second World Cup semi-final might grate with his former employers, the IRFU. You couldn’t say that he had more talent available to him than Joe Schmidt. Nor did he have a healthy provincial structure underpinning his side. The Welsh players yearn to escape the regions. For their Irish counterparts, you suspect it’s now the other way round.
Many of Schmidt’s players escaped to the sun this week. At some stage they will surely be asked to give their opinions on why they under-performed so dismally in Japan, even though Schmidt tried to pre-empt the review process with some fairly self-serving comments after arriving at Dublin Airport.
Too much control: Schmidt became even more conservative after Ireland’s run of successBILLY STICKLAND
According to the coach, the reason for Ireland’s no-show against New Zealand was simple: any team who’d been granted a free weekend by Typhoon Hagibis had a massive advantage. Schmidt also spoke about how hard he had worked and how many job offers he has received. At no stage did he accept any culpability.
There’s a theory out there that Schmidt is above reproach, simply because of his unrivalled win percentage. With a success rate like his, it’s ungrateful — rude, even — to suggest that his game-plan became rigidly predictable or that the team failed to evolve post-2018.
But such unquestioning devotion belongs to the Cult of Joe, whereby the coach’s personality became almost bigger than the team. This cult was shaped by results but also in the clubhouses and conference rooms of the land, where Schmidt has enlightened and entertained — and never accepted a fee.
He is brilliant in this type of setting, a complete natural, and everyone was a winner. The punters went home happy and Schmidt built enormous goodwill while remaining in control of the message. In general, the more successful Schmidt became, the more suspicious he was of the media.
The Cult of Joe developed to the stage that on the eve of the New Zealand game, the Irish players were entertained by the impressionist Risteárd Cooper doing a number on Joe in the team hotel in Tokyo — an affectionate number, of course, focusing on Schmidt’s furious punctuality, his workaholism and the like. Cooper could not go in too hard, given that it was Schmidt who had invited him along.
This was a far cry from Cooper’s appearance in Paris towards the end of Ireland’s disastrous 2007 World Cup campaign, when he famously did an impression of an RTE reporter, asking Eddie O’Sullivan from the back of the press conference: ‘Are you a croque, monsieur?’
The current players scoffed at any comparisons with 2007 but for anyone who worked at both tournaments, it is impossible to miss the similarities between Schmidt and O’Sullivan: two micro-managers who were reluctant delegators, who ended up selecting more on loyalty than on form.
Schmidt brought control-freakery to another level, though. It’s hard to imagine any other coach having the degree of input that Schmidt brought to every aspect of the gig, from the movement of players between provinces to coaching appointments right down to what the players could and couldn’t say to the media — we can see him with the team media manager, grilling Jordan Larmour for five minutes before sending the youngster to face our lethal dictaphones.
Irish rugby has never known a rugby brain like Schmidt’s but it got to the stage where he became answerable to no one. For his first three-and-a-half years with Ireland, he was ably advised by team manager, Mick Kearney, who had gravitas and smarts and offered useful advice where necessary. Kearney’s replacement, Paul Dean, has always seemed a much more peripheral figure.
Technically, IRFU performance director David Nucifora was Schmidt’s boss but at best he was perceived as side-kick, at worst as Schmidt’s enforcer. Having basked in the reflected glory of Ireland’s successes, Nucifora now faces a difficult period, especially as his relationship with Leinster, Ireland’s premier province, is toxic.
Steve Hansen warned that Ireland would find it difficult moving from hunter to hunted. The human reaction to being successful is to continue doing what has worked for you. If anything, though, Schmidt became even more conservative in his game plan. Ireland became more predictable and therefore more vulnerable.
He did not enjoy huge luck with injuries, admittedly. Dan Leavy and Jack Conan were missed in Japan. Joey Carbery and Robbie Henshaw missed valuable chunks of time in the lead up. But none of this explains how Ireland became such a clunky-looking side in attack — which was supposedly Schmidt’s main area of responsibility.
In the slavishness to structure and shape, Ireland’s handling skills went to pot. The irony is that Schmidt built his reputation as a skills coach in Clermont, before making Leinster the best passing side in Europe. By the final pool game against Samoa, when humidity was no longer any sort of an excuse, highly talented players such as Robbie Henshaw, Keith Earls and Conor Murray were failing to hit their targets with straightforward passes under little pressure. Little wonder that the same mistakes were made under greater pressure in the quarter-final. And these errors had nothing to do with New Zealand’s longer turnaround.
Sometimes you wondered if a player’s value to a Schmidt-coached team was measured more by the effectiveness of his clean-out technique than by his ability to put a teammate into space. The team’s successes brought joy but it was often by joyless rugby. Never was that joylessness more obvious than in Japan, when the host nation offered such a vivid contrast.
As a Lancastrian from a rugby league background, Andy Farrell doesn’t strike you as the joie-de-vivre type but he needs to lighten the mood somehow. He could start with a change of scene, away from Carton House — although the temptation will be to stick with what is known, given that he will have such limited preparation time before his first game as coach, against Scotland at home in 14 weeks.
Farrell is charismatic and popular with the players, although admittedly it’s always easier to be popular when you are number two. He also appears to have a good relationship with his support staff, including attack coach Mike Catt, who has a big job on his hands.
Farrell has served a long apprenticeship as an assistant but he has been able to observe at close range some of the best coaches in the sport, and a variety of management styles: Schmidt, Gatland, Lancaster. Temperamentally, we suspect he’s closest to Gatland — a master delegator, man-manager and motivator. He might not be the worst role model.
The Kiwis shit themselves
I always wondered would Ireland be better served if the provinces weren’t in such rude health. The welsh player hardly play for the regions and when they do tog out they are usually shadows of themselves. Their players seem focused solely on wales. I still think Munster v Leinster is bigger for the players than Ireland. Maybe I’m miles off but you see some of those players play for their clubs you’d wonder.
If that’s true it’s bizarre given that this so called rivalry and the provinces being taken serious are all less than 20 years old.
Not really. It’s their bred and butter the players play for their provinces before their country. In wales nobody really cares about club rugby since they went ospreys, blues, scarlets and dragons. Wales is the only show in town.
Youve been right about everything else mate.
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Ireland rubby has been around since the 1880s has it not? The provinces begin to be taken a bit serious from late 1990s and they now trump playing with for your country? Go way … The 6ns has always been more of a draw than club rubby and always will be… the provinces themselves are only there to funnel players into the Irish team.
Hard to believe @ChairmanDan is still on here talking down to posters about rubby when he has been an absolute rabble since he started posting on rubby matters here, a broken clock eventually gets it right but Dan hasn’t even managed that yet!
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Ah that’s pretty much all nonsense. The vast majority of the players now would only know Munster and Leinster. The draw is to win a European cup at the start of season with their provinces. In wales none of their clubs team have been consistent enough to compete at club level. The draw is the six nations. The Welsh national team is the only show in the road. Sam warburton basically stopped playing for Cardiff. You wouldn’t see Sean o brien stop playing for Leinster or o Mahoney Munster.
I’m worse for engaging… but you cling to whatever you need to cling to in order to excuse more failure.
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Youd think the stale banter would have ran its course after a month. But you’d be wrong.
Not really I just thing wales benefit hugely from having zero interest in the club game.
I know the rugby haters are melting down no matter what.
No, what Wales benefit from is has having pride in their jersey. They have a history and tradition that they are expected to live up to and generally do — what really benefits them is that they go out with belief. We saw a completely depleted Welsh team go out and give a great accord of themselves yesterday and took on that scrum when everyone else thought it was the last thing they’d do.
Ireland just dont have the culture, the history nor the players to compete at a World Cup. It;s grand having their lads fresh for 6ns — but they’ll never get it done in a WC and that has nothing got to do with putting emphasis on winning a Heineken cup ffs.
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Wales have never won a World Cup. Their last three exits have been humiliating. Zero ambition. Just crash ball after crash ball. It’s no wonder so many of their players are injured.
I never said they won a world cup — they’ve certainly done a lot better than Ireland and they were robbed of a final place one year… An Irish fan talking about humiliating and crash ball 
You are either first or you are last. I don’t get this semi final obsession. You are either in it to win it or else go home.