When Arsenal legend Tony Adams rang his former boss Arsène Wenger in October 2008 to inform him he was succeeding Harry Redknapp as Portsmouth manager, Wenger famously responded by saying: “Welcome to Hell.”
Joe Schmidt laughs aloud and gives a slight, knowing nod. In truth, of course, Schmidt confesses that, no less than Wenger, he loves coaching. Even so, the comment resonates with him. Coaching is an all-consuming job.
“It’s a paradox, because it’s a miserable luxury being able to do the job that we do. I’ve spent a bit of time with Arsène. I went in and had a chat with the Arsenal squad a few years ago before they won the first of their recent FA Cups. It was at their training ground and it was pretty intimidating.
“He was sitting in the front row. Aaron Ramsey was good value; a Welshman who knew all about the rugby. [Olivier] Giroud was really up to speed. He was in Montpelier and he’d be mates with François Trinh-Duc and a few others. But I spent a long time chatting to Arsène. He’s incredibly organised and thorough, and he’s a gentleman. I was really impressed with him.”
He cites the preface to Quiet Leadership: Winning Hearts, Minds and Matches, the autobiography of Carlo Ancelotti. "It was stated that the average tenure for a Premier League manager is 2.2 years, or something like that, and if you take Arsène Wenger out of that equation, it's 1.7 years. He's a total freak."
The Irish coach admits it can be a lonely job. That was one of the more surprising revelations over the course of an hour-long interview last Tuesday in Carton House. He’s no ordinary Joe, but Schmidt came across as very human and self-doubting, genuinely fearing he might out-stay his welcome in Ireland, while dropping the broadest of hints that his time in Ireland is nearing an endgame of sorts, and he and his wife Kellie will return to New Zealand after the 2019 World Cup.
The defeats linger longer, too, whereas the wins pass by quickly before he has moved on to the next game. “That’s true for all of us,” he admits. “I was speaking at a Uefa conference earlier this year, and the last slide I had – and I don’t often use slides – was ‘celebrate your victories’. That doesn’t mean going out and drinking, or anything like that, it’s just take some satisfaction out of the job. Otherwise you’re forever on your own case.”
You sense it was as much for himself too.
Another book Schmidt warmly recommends is Form, Kieren Fallon's autobiography which, he admits with a self-mocking raise of the eyebrows: "I just finished, at 1.40 this morning. It was really interesting."
Family and rugby
Apart from reading, he admits his life is entirely consumed by family and rugby. “If it wasn’t for my family, rugby would be all-consuming. I don’t do anything else, per se. I like reading, and I actually used to read quite a bit when I was with Leinster but I read even less now. I find I have more to do,” he says, chuckling at this, and thanking “a patient wife and an independent family” in reference to Kellie and their kids, Abby, Tim, Ella and Luke.
He would “zip in and see” all bar Abby, who is now in New Zealand, that afternoon and again next Tuesday. Even after the autumn series, there wasn’t much time to bask in the glow or take time out, for he then travelled to Japan to scour the best training centres and hotels for the 2019 tournament.
"It's funny, the [2019] World Cup for us started straight after the last World Cup, trying to build in the direction that we felt we needed to go, while at the same time trying to get the best ranking to be in that top four in the world when the draw happened. The World Cup is a very compressed competition that you prepare for, for a long time, whereas the Six Nations is a competition that I think supersedes the World Cup as far as the tradition and importance which it has locally, but once the World Cup is on there's nothing that has the same profile."
He has long since become a devotee of the Six Nations. “The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive either,” he says. “In the end, you definitely want to be short-term focussed and, to be honest, we wouldn’t even be Six Nations focussed. Right now we’re totally French focussed. I think most environments are like that.”
He takes comfort in the belief that “the supporters have stayed relatively buoyant because we’ve done something special every year”, citing the wins over New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.
Ask him what he least likes and most likes about coaching and he doesn’t even factor in the former. “I love coaching, and that means being on the pitch,” he says, although he enjoys analysing opposition teams and players too.
It’s not all gravy, though, even leaving aside the losses. “There are tough times, like Thursday morning . . . telling someone they’re not travelling to Paris is tough when they’re working as hard as they can. Dealing with non-selected players is the part of the job I hate the most because I know how hard they’re working and what it means to them.”
“But you have a responsibility, and there’s a degree of ruthlessness about it because if I didn’t do what the players believe is in the best interests of the team, players would lose faith a bit in what you’re doing.”
The detail of his Monday morning reviews are famed, so much so that Paul O’Connell once even describing them “brutal”.
“A massive exaggerated reputation, I think,” he says of those reviews. “It’s honest. There might be two or three positive things in the Monday review and you try to not make it personal. Unfortunately, two or three guys might feature, but it’s in the scope of the team, and the scope of improvement we can get from the team if those guys just get this right.”
Schmidt loves the coaching brotherhood, too. He recalls the Thursday night before the Ireland-South Africa game last November when catching up with Allister Coetzee, Johann van Graan and the rest of the Springbok coaches for an hour-long coffee that extended to 2½ hours.
Everything was discussed bar the upcoming game; coaching, and kids and families, and balancing the two, travel, the two countries, rugby environments, and other opponents.
"I think it's important to do things like that because it's a lonely place. On those Thursday mornings it's a lonely place. I know less about propping than Greg Feek [Ireland scrum coach]. I know less about the lineout than Simon Easterby [forwards coach], and I've huge respect for Richie Murphy [skills and kicking coach] and Andy Farrell [defence coach], and what they might think about a player.
“Those selection decisions can take some time, but when push comes to shove, it’s my team. That’s the perception and I’m happy to take that mantle because that’s the job. That’s head coach, and then you’ve got to deliver those messages to players, and you’ll be picked apart by people who have different perspectives.”
Coaching eye
Brian O’Driscoll once said that Schmidt has a “photographic memory for all things rugby”.
“I have some neat and some miserable images if you want me to go through a long list,” he says, laughing. “But the thing that is most valuable to a coach is a thing called the coaching eye. I would be very thorough in my review but I think real-time feedback – if someone makes an error or hits the wrong line – to be able to spot that, or repair that, or question a player immediately during a training [session], I think that definitely helps.”
He says O’Driscoll “is being pretty generous there, because he didn’t require too much coaching” and likens him to Paul O’Connell.
He still thinks of himself as a teacher, who just happens to be working in rugby.
Kellie is “a sounding board” to him, as are his coaching staff, and the leadership group. When he and Kellie met while he was at Tararua College, they could never have known that rugby coaching would take up such a huge part of their lives. He’s been coaching full-time for 15 years now, this is their 11th year living away from New Zealand, and the last eight of them have been in Ireland.
He still thinks of himself as a teacher, who just happens to be working in rugby. That's how it started, first in Palmerston Boys and then in Tauranga Boys College in Bay of Plenty.
“I started seriously coaching when I was 25/26, after I snapped my Achilles tendon, and then I kind of snapped it again. It didn’t repair properly and so they had to do some more work on it, and that was me pretty well shot to play. I didn’t have many things going for me as a player, certainly not size or skills. It was only speed.
“My work ethic was in my teaching. That was my job. Rugby in the amateur days was genuinely a hobby, and it was for me. I just loved playing the game. I really did enjoy training, but I didn’t enjoy the gym, and I think I played my first first-class game, as a 68 kilo winger. It’s laughable. Downwind, I could be very good. Upwind, jeeze!”
Schmidt had been over with Kellie to coach at Mullingar, as well as teaching and coaching in Wilson’s Hospital. Mark Donaldson, the ex-All Blacks scrumhalf, had been approached by Mullingar and recommended Schmidt.
“It’s nice to have that link and I’ve got relatives in Clare. My mum’s father was Kieran Daniel Whelan, so there’s certainly a few Irish links on both sides of my family. On my mum’s side, they were Peterson, so it’s a little bit easier to identify, without ever claiming to be anything but a Kiwi. You absolutely are a blow-in, but it’s nice to blow in somewhere where you’ve been really accepted and enjoyed the people who’ve welcomed you.”
They went to the Barcelona Olympics for 12 days, to Wimbledon, and toured around Europe with Kiwis, Aussies and Canadians. “So it was a fantastic life-opportunity and growth-opportunity for us.”
Like their Mullingar year, he describes the three years in Clermont as Vern Cotter’s assistant “a massive growth experience” and credits Kellie with the decision. “She certainly tipped the balance, because I wouldn’t be the most confident person but she said: ‘you’ll learn it [French] in six months and I learned enough in six months that I could coach in French.”
After two losing finals, Clermont won the bouclier de brennus (the French league trophy) for the first time in over 100 years in his last season there in 2009-10. He recalls the trophy homecoming with "65,000 people in the Place de Jaude when we came back and they were all jumping up and down, singing 'Qui ne sauté pas n'est pas Auvergnat' – he who does not jump is not part of the region. Hairs on the back of the neck stuff. It was great to see the growth in our kids through that time as well."
‘Global citizens’
The Schmidts are in their eighth year in Ireland, and their third eldest Ella (18) has spent more of her life in Ireland than in New Zealand. Fourteen-year-old Luke has lived over half his life in Dublin.
Tim, who turned 22 in December, is back in Dublin after a sojourn in Toulouse and is completing his last year of a finance and French degree before joining an accountancy firm. He’s also played for the Irish 7s, although his involvement has been limited by studies. “He had big exams over the Christmas period and so he’s actually been doing some study. I thought he was allergic! But he’s got over that,” says Schmidt, laughing. “Fair play to him, he’s worked hard.”
Eldest, Abby is back in New Zealand. “She’s gone to the dark side,” says Schmidt, with mock seriousness, or maybe not, before he explains: “She works for MediaWorks in Palmerston North.”
He and Kellie will return to New Zealand, along with Luke, most probably when his contract expires after the 2019 World Cup in Japan, although not necessarily forever.
“I would definitely go back for a period of time. I think Kellie and I will both get back, because of the age of our parents. My Mum is still alive, my Dad died 10 years ago. But I think our kids are global citizens, and I’m not sure whether Tim and Ella will ever go back. Luke will go wherever we go because he’s still a bit more dependent on us than most kids would be.” (Luke’s epilepsy has been “normalised” since successful surgery in Melbourne two years ago).
This has been his longest stint in one job, and he wonders whether the players might need 'a fresh voice'
Schmidt used to play at least nine holes of golf every Wednesday while at Clermont, sometimes a full 18, but he last played a round with Andy Farrell, Richie Murphy and former Irish manager Mick Kearney about six months ago.
That said, he does manage a round of pitch & putt with Luke every Sunday. “That’s me and Luke time,” says Schmidt.
Along the way, Schmidt has prevaricated over his two contract extensions with the IRFU. This has been his longest stint in one job, and he wonders whether the players might need “a fresh voice”.
“It’s those poor Leinster players who’ve had to put up with me whingeing at them, or pushing them or cajoling them or patting them on the back, for eight years.
“They’ve got to be sick of me by now, although I guess the one thing I’m confident of is that I’m not sick of them or the other guys that are coming through. In the texts or the phone calls, they were the key drivers in me staying because you do worry about overstaying your welcome. You worry about taking the team somewhere else. You have to keep improving and that means even if you win everything you’ve got to get better.
“Look, part of the Hell is sometimes external perspectives that get imposed on you, or you get picked apart. I could spend a long time telling you now about decisions I would like to change, and I would change, and there’ll be decisions through the next two years that I’ll get wrong or the coaching team will get wrong.
“Hopefully I haven’t outstayed my welcome, that people are still excited by what we might do in the next two years, and I’m excited by what we are going to try to do in the next few days to be as competitive as we can be in the Stade de France on Saturday.
“Just two paragraphs,” is his parting shot.
He’d love to be virtually invisible. But he also knows darn well it doesn’t work like that – the higher his profile is when he finally leaves us the better.
