Waaaaaait!
Say it ain’t so, Joe.
I am talking to you, Joe Schmidt, Wallaby coach.
After everything you’ve done, everything you’ve achieved, with the Promised Land just up ahead, now the news breaks that you will finish up at the end of the year and head home to New Zealand. At least this encompasses the Lions tour, but it is not the three years everyone was hoping for which would have seen you guide the Wobblies all the way through to the end of the 2027 World Cup, here at home.
Bugger, bugger, bugger – or, as you Kiwis say it, bggr, bggr, bggr.
There is no way around it, this is a bitter blow to Australian rugby, right at the time it had emerged from Death Valley and was starting to climb the sunlit uplands to previously undreamt of, if still distant, peaks.
To recap for those who’ve just joined us, Australia has been blessed with more than our fair share of great coaches over the years – Rod Macqueen, Bob Dwyer and yes, Alan Jones, being the primary three – but we’ve had precious few in the last 20 years or so, since Rod Macqueen retired.
Joe Schmidt will step down at the end of the year.Credit: Getty Images
Certainly, Robbie Deans had his moments, and played a bad hand very well, while Michael Cheika’s tenure in 2015 saw the Wallabies make the World Cup final against the run of play, and against all reason. But apart from that, we’ve really only had precious few shining moments in an otherwise dark, dross sea for the last two decades.
Nothing was more disastrous than the brief and tortured reign of Eddie Jones in 2023, when the Australian team was reduced to a rebellious rabble – so bad that no-one shouted out “mine!” when Fiji put the ball up in the group stages of the World Cup. We lost that match, and Wales put 40 points on us a week later to ensure we failed to make the World Cup quarter-finals for the first time.
When, shortly afterwards, Jones – denying furiously that he was going to coach Japan – left to coach Japan, it was less the end of an era than the end of an error, and Australia turned its lonely eyes to Schmidt.
Max Jorgensen’s try after the siren gave the Wallabies their first win at Twickenham in almost a decade.Credit: Getty Images
The Kiwi was an accomplished international coach, nowhere more than with Ireland who he had moulded into one of the best teams in the world. No-one expected miracles from him but, against all odds, we got miracles. Within just one season, Schmidt had the Wallabies playing the best rugby they had in a decade.
On the end-of-year spring tour, they narrowly beat England at Twickenham in the most spectacular fashion imaginable, and very nearly did the same to mighty Ireland in Dublin – again playing with simply thrilling style, and enough resolution to kill a brown dog.
Insiders pointed to Schmidt himself as the key reason for the turnaround. As a student of the game like few others, he was able to work out a plan that profited from his players’ strengths, minimised the damage from the weak points, and had everyone believing.
One quote from centre Len Ikitau on why he attempted the miracle flick-pass – out of his left hand, while fending with his right – to Max Jorgensen on the wing, to put England to the sword, summed up the whole Schmidt effect: “The coaches harp on about, we’re rugby players, and we [must] make rugby decisions, so I just made a rugby decision there.”
Get it? Schmidt liberated his players to trust their own talents, and we all saw the results.
Try! Try! Try! Try for your life, I’ll tell a man it is!
In the wake of such a victory, such a triumph, seemingly dormant Wallaby supporters came from everywhere, with the one joyous cry: Australian rugby was back! After so many years of suffering endless humiliations, everyone was looking forward to the next three years as Schmidt built on what had already been accomplished, and turn them into possible World Cup contenders.
(I know, I know, I am extrapolating a long way from what was little more than a few fabulous Tests, but that still remains an accurate summation of the ecstatic mood.)
And now this. Now Schmidt has called time on his Wallaby coaching career.
In the end, he has prioritised the needs of his own family over and above the needs of Wallaby family, and of course that must be respected – and admired. He will leave at the end of the year with the warm thanks of Australian rugby for his contribution.
He says he is happy to stay on in some capacity as an adviser if the next Wallaby coach will have him. That’s easy, Joe.
The answer is yes. Whatever that magic elixir is that you sprinkle over your teams, we need you to give us several bottles, please, and always be on standby to sprinkle more. In the meantime, we know we’ll have your best for this season at least as you take the Wallabies towards the first peak: beating the British and Irish Lions!
Good luck, go hard, and give us your best, coach, one more time for the road.
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