Amongst the first-rate head coaches at this tournament include one who is coaching Ireland and two others who cut their teeth here. One is hailed as an outstanding coach, and another as the man who instilled Leinster with their hard-edged, professional culture. The other, despite a trophy-laden CV in many different locations, is seemingly not so well regarded.
Joe Schmidt’s status rightly knows no bounds, after guiding Leinster and Ireland to six trophies in five successive seasons. Michael Cheika is still, correctly, hailed by Leinster ex-players and supporters alike as the man who launched their golden era by guiding them to a league title and their first breakthrough Heineken Cup triumph in 2009.
Schmidt has had success wherever he has gone, be it with Mullingar and Wilson’s Hospital, New Zealand Schools, Bay of Plenty, Auckland Blues or Clermont Auvergne.
Cheika has become the only coach to guide teams to both Heineken Cup and Super Rugby success, when overseeing the Waratahs’ breakthrough Super 15 triumph last year. Each in their own way have helped to transform Ireland and Australia, making them 8/1 joint fourth favourites and 13/2 joint second favourites respectively (England, amazingly, are joint second favourites too).
That Wales are still at 16/1 can only be down to their cruel injury profile, but there is no doubt Warren Gatland is a primary reason why they are contenders again this time.
One-off games
Last Saturday was a reminder of the ability of Gatland, Shaun Edwards and Rob Howley to prepare sides for tournament rugby and prime them for big one-off games.
Gatland has been doing this since he became player-coach at Galwegians in the early ’90s, leading them to promotion from Division Two of the AIL, and repeating the trick as assistant at Thames Valley, before taking up the reins at Connacht.
Under his watch, they became the first Irish side to win on French soil in the 1997-98 Challenge Cup, and he then guided Connacht to a double over Ian McGeechan’s star-studded Northampton, who had five of the the Scottish coach’s Lions Test series winners from the previous summer in South Africa. Connacht first scalped Northampton by 43-13 at the Sportsground and then won a pool decider 20-15 at Franklin’s Gardens to reach the quarter-finals.
In Gatland’s first game as Ireland coach in 1998, they almost stunned a French team, which went on to win back-to-back Slams, when losing 18-16 in Paris as 16/1 underdogs. Amongst his innovations for that game was to invite the public to send goodwill messages to the squad directlyand so bypass what he saw as the “negativity” of the rugby media.
The following year, David Humphreys missed a penalty to beat France in Lansdowne Road. Another year on, Ireland won in Paris for the first time since 1972 and beat the French for the first time since 1983, with a little help from you-know- who’s hat-trick. Ireland backed that up in Lansdowne Road a year later, when also denying England the Slam on the final Saturday with a 20-14 win in Dublin in his final Six Nations campaign, when Ireland finished behind England on points difference. Of course, Gatland’s time as Ireland coach was blighted by the quarter-final play-off defeat to Argentina in Lens, but history has since shown that this was the Pumas’ golden generation. Ireland only beat them by a point in Adelaide four years later, and in 2007 were beaten 30-15.
His good days with Ireland were attributed to Eddie O’Sullivan’s coaching, and in his time at Wasps and Wales the same unbelievers were quicker praise Edwards. For sure, O’Sullivan and Edwards were influential figures. Yet when Gatland took over as head coach at Wasps midway through the 2001-02 season with Edwards having joined that season as defence coach to Nigel Melville, they were bottom of the table. They finished seventh, and the following season Gatland led them to the first of three successive Premiership titles, a Challenge Cup and a Heineken Cup.
Seven years
In those three years, Wasps won 12 knockout matches out of 12. Gloucester were beaten 39-3, Northampton by 57-10, Sale by 43-22, Leicester by 39-14, Bath by 48-30, Munster by 37-32 and Toulouse by 27-20.
Back in Waikato, they won the Air New Zealand Cup for the first time since his playing days by beating Wellington 37-31 in the final. In his first game as Welsh coach in the 2008 Six Nations, at Twickenham, Wales stunned England with a 26-19 after trailing by 19-6 nearing the hour mark (sound familiar?).
They completed the Slam by beating France 29-12 at the Millennium Stadium. After leading Wales to a 9-8 semi-final defeat to France in the 2011 World Cup, following their 22-10 quarter-final victory over Ireland, Wales won another Slam in 2012, which incorporated another famous win at Twickenham.
Of course, he will never be forgiven for dropping Brian O’Driscoll for the decisive third Test against the Wallabies two years ago, when the 41-16 victory sealed the Lions’ first Test series win since 1997. His wind-ups in public also grate with some, but hey, it would a dull world if everyone spoke the same lingo.
Cue another Twickenham coup last Saturday when, admittedly, his injury-ravaged team didn’t play particularly well but certainly underlined their fitness, bravery and opportunism with a remarkable win.
All his sides are invariably fit and well-prepared for tournaments, are immensely unified, are tactically and emotionally primed for different one-off challenges, and hence regularly rise to the big occasion.
Maybe he’s just lucky.
