Liam Napier and Elliott Smith discuss injury gaps, who will cover the third halfback role and the Lions' win in the lead-up to the All Blacks tour squad naming. Video / NZ Herald
Joe Schmidt has transformed the Wallabies, making them a unified and competitive team.
Schmidt’s coaching success includes turning Leinster and Ireland into top teams and impacting the All Blacks.
Despite stepping down, Schmidt’s mistrust of NZ Rugby may prevent him from pursuing the All Blacks job.
Joe Schmidt may not relish the comparison with Chairman Mao Zedong, but since he arrived in Australia after the last World Cup, he’s taken the Wallabies on a great leap forward.
In a sense, Schmidt has industrialised the Wallabies – collectivised them, too, from being disparate individuals unsureof their purpose and how to work together, to a seemingly harmonious and unified group playing for each other.
They have lost the series to the British & Irish Lions, but every credible rugby analyst on the planet can see that the Wallabies, broken and abject at the 2023 World Cup, are a different team now to the one they were before Schmidt arrived as head coach.
Joe Schmidt has had remarkable success with many teams. Photo / Photosport
They still lack depth in their tight five, which means their scrum remains vulnerable, but that one continued failing aside, the Wallabies are virtually unrecognisable from the team they were under Schmidt’s predecessor, Eddie Jones.
There were periods in the first half of last weekend’s second test when it felt like the Wallabies had rolled the clock back to the glory days of the 1990s, such was their speed and accuracy of movement. They displayed an ability to conjure tries on the back of their instincts, natural athleticism, sharp pass-and-catch game and an innate reading of broken play situations.
He turned Leinster into a genuine and consistent heavyweight when he was there. He took Ireland from being the nearly men to No 1 in the world, chalking two enormously historic victories against the All Blacks during his tenure.
And he certainly had an impact when he was with the All Blacks in 2022 and 2023, sharpening their attack, and instilling an appreciation of why the finer technical details matter.
More than that, though, he won the respect of the senior players. They enjoyed his intensity, his demands to keep standards high and his passion to improve them.
It was a running joke that players tried to avoid bumping into Schmidt around the team hotel as they would inevitably be pulled into a deep analysis of some set-play or another, but high-performance environments need that sort of intensity and single-mindedness to succeed.
Schmidt’s going to finish with the Wallabies at the end of this year, and the question of what next, if anything, is one that has to be asked.
Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt has brought renewed vigour to the side. Photo / Photosport
This is a coach with a long history of having proven transformational wherever he’s been and having had such a significant impact in Ireland, then Australia, could the All Blacks’ job be the last chapter Schmidt writes to finish a glorious coaching career?
He turns 60 this year and has been public about his desire to be more available to his family. That’s the reason he’s stepping down from the Wallabies job, but it doesn’t necessarily rule him out of contention as a future All Blacks coach or being involved in some capacity within New Zealand’s high-performance system.
The bigger barrier to Schmidt wanting to take any coaching role in New Zealand is the lack of trust and confidence he has in the national body, having had a front-row seat to the way things played out in 2022-2023 with former All Blacks coach Ian Foster.
Robertson was being sounded out to take over from Foster – who was in South Africa with the All Blacks – and the NZR board wanted to see if Schmidt could be added to the potential incoming coaching group.
Ian Foster (right) with halfback Aaron Smith after a key victory against the Springboks. Photo / Photosport
Whatever semblance of respect existed after that episode was lost entirely a few months later when NZR conducted the process to find its next coach while Foster still had seven months of his contract to run.
As Foster revealed in his biography, Leading Under Pressure, that killed any prospect of Schmidt wanting to stay in New Zealand after the 2023 Rugby World Cup.
Having been told the board wanted to begin the process of appointing the 2024 All Blacks coach in February 2023, Foster met with then NZR chair Patsy Reddy, not to see if he could change her mind, but to explain the issues that would cause.
“I told her that if they went through with it, they would be putting a massive task on my shoulders to deal with my management team, many of whom would be sacked,” Foster wrote.
“And, secondly, that NZR would be alienating a few people who might be strong candidates if they waited. Joe Schmidt was starting to love his time with the All Blacks, I said, and would make an excellent head coach.
“She asked if she should talk with Joe, to sound out if he would be interested. ‘I doubt it,’ I replied, ‘because he has seen what you are doing. It has been a battle for me to make sure he stays engaged through to the World Cup’.”
Having had such a difficult experience, the prospect of Schmidt wanting to challenge for the All Blacks job should it become contestable when Robertson’s four-year contract expires, seems low.
But it’s surely incumbent on the incoming NZR chief executive to try to wipe the slate clean, build a relationship with Schmidt to restore trust and confidence, and at least open the possibility of a reconciliation.
If not, Schmidt will likely finish his career as the greatest coach the All Blacks never had.
