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Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt is no stranger to pressure in Dublin. In his first season as a professional head coach with Leinster, the team lost three of its first four league matches.
Former Ireland and British and Irish Lions captain Brian O’Driscoll, who made 186 appearances over 15 years for Leinster, saw up close the criticism Schmidt was forced to endure.
“The papers start doing their comparison of Joe’s record and those of his predecessors, the subtext being that this guy’s a joke, a mistake, and he won’t last ... I know the tide will turn, and it does,” O’Driscoll wrote in his autobiography.
Schmidt had taken over at Leinster from Michael Cheika, the future Wallabies coach who delivered the team’s first European Cup in 2009. He went on to lead Leinster to European honours in 2011 and 2012, before taking charge of the Irish national team.
Schmidt was also subjected to heavy criticism as Ireland coach, despite ultimately delivering three Six Nations Championships. In 2016, well-known Irish rugby pundit George Hook was particularly vitriolic.
“Schmidt may well be the worst coach/selector in Irish rugby history ... the authoritarian approach by the national coach has spelled the demise of leadership,” Hook wrote for the Irish Independent.
Brian O’Driscoll and Joe Schmidt after Leinster’s Heineken Cup final victory over Northampton in 2011.Credit: Getty Images
Two years after that article was published, Schmidt led Ireland to the Six Nations grand slam, for just the third time in the country’s history. Though his last game was a heavy defeat to New Zealand in the quarter-finals of the 2019 World Cup, history has ultimately judged Schmidt favourably in Ireland.
There remains a fascination about Schmidt in Dublin. The coach has admitted that when he first arrived to coach the Wallabies last March, the majority of those who recognised him were from the Irish community in Coogee.
Wallabies trio Carter Gordon, Angus Bell, and Len Ikitau have all been up in front of the Irish press this week, and each has spoken glowingly of the New Zealander’s impact on the Australian side and the style he is trying to get the team to play, despite comprehensive defeats against England and Italy.
On Wednesday, one of Schmidt’s former players for Leinster and Ireland, Gordon D’Arcy, questioned whether his exacting attention to detail on the training ground has left some of the Wallabies burnt out at the tail end of what has been a long Test season.
Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt has experienced pressure in Dublin as a coach with Leinster and IrelandCredit: Getty
“Anyone who has played under Joe knows exactly what that looks like: precision, relentlessness, and attention to detail that can be both inspiring and exhausting. When it works, it’s devastating. When belief wanes, it becomes heavy,” D’Arcy wrote in the Irish Times.
“With two games left in his tenure, it’s fair to ask whether the Wallabies still have the energy for it. History doesn’t always treat coaches kindly at the end of their cycles.”
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There is a sense that it is now or never for Schmidt’s Wallabies when it comes to recording a legacy-defining result. In Ireland, the Wallabies brand is still held in high esteem – probably more so than back home in Australia right now.
Arguably, the affection is built on memories of a more glorious past, and moments like the Wallabies’ last-minute try in the 1991 World Cup quarter-final over Ireland in Dublin.
Asked about the Wallabies’ disappointing loss against Italy on Tuesday in Dublin, Irish prop Thomas Clarkson was at pains to put the result into context, given his team scraped a five-point win against the same opponents in March.
“The Italians were good, to be fair to them,” Clarkson said. “Australia will be wounded now off the back of that, they are going to be dangerous.”
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