The British and Irish Lions tour is still just a speck on the horizon, more than six months distant, but already the rumour mills are grinding into action. Wallaby supremo Joe Schmidt’s contract expires after the third Test of the series on 2 August, and after that all bets are off.
Despite a run of relative success in 2024, and clear signs of improvement after a disastrous World Cup, the latest word is Schmidt may stick to the plan and quit after the Lions tour. He originally signed a two-year deal with Rugby Australia on the understanding his son Luke, who suffers from severe epilepsy, would limit his involvement to one half of a full four-year World Cup cycle.
As Schmidt commented just before taking up post as Ian Foster’s assistant with the All Blacks in 2023: “It is difficult. I remember an epileptologist once saying to me that we know more about the bottom of the ocean than what goes on between our ears.”
If he does walk, RA will be in the unenviable position of having to appoint its fourth national coach in as many years. It is a turbulent situation, and it raises the spectre of whether Australia can afford to install another foreigner as head coach.
A slight note of pique was evident in CEO Phil Waugh’s comments about the political uncertainties last week.
“We expect to sit down with Joe and work through the plan post-Lions, as we have said [previously],” Waugh revealed.
“A really important point, [one] that we continue to make, is that we do what we say we are going to do, and Joe was always committed through to the end of the Lions.
“We have done a lot of heavy lifting, there is progress in the Wallaby environment, he has surrounded himself with really good people, and now it’s important to give players and staff certainty.”
RA’s succession planning in the event of Schmidt’s departure is already rolling down the slipway, but there are some significant snags to overcome. Two of the major candidates, Les Kiss in Queensland and Dan McKellar at the Waratahs, are either at the start, or in a reboot of their Super Rugby careers.
Kiss has completed his debut season on a three-year deal with the Reds, while McKellar has yet to pick up the reins at Daceyville after an early release from the Leicester Tigers in the UK. Both are reestablishing their credentials back home. The other options are to offer Schmidt some leeway in the form of flexi-time, fitting work in around his family commitments so he can complete the four-year term; or to appoint another foreigner, maybe even one of Schmidt’s own choosing.
It is the last possibility which foreshadows Australia’s future as a rugby nation most darkly. The installation of foreign coaches can be a double-edged sword. Appointments from the present or recent past, such as Andy Farrell for Ireland, Shaun Edwards in France; Felix Jones, Aled Walters and now Tony Brown with the Springboks, and Eddie Jones in England have unquestionably provided a huge fillip to the national game in those countries. They bring a welcome infusion of new ideas and a natural lack of parochialism with them.
But there is a downside. There can be a problem returning the game back to its permanent custodians, and this has been for the most part, the experience in Australia and Wales. The similarities between the two nations are too obvious to ignore.
Wales entered the professional era all at sea, bottoming out at the deep end of the ocean with a 96-13 rout by the Springboks at Loftus Versveld in the summer of 1998. They lost all four provincial matches in South Africa on the same trip, and that triggered the appointment of Sir Graham Henry, the outstanding Kiwi coach of the Super Rugby-winning Auckland Blues.
Henry and his successor, Sir Steve Hansen, laid the groundwork for Wales’ first Grand Slam in 27 years in 2005, achieved under the stewardship of a Welshman groomed for the handover of power, Mike Ruddock. Within one year Ruddock was gone, ousted by player power and internal political wrangling. His replacement, Gareth Jenkins, fared even less well, posting a 30% win rate before Wales were unceremoniously dumped out of the 2007 World Cup at the pool stage by Fiji.
Wales had circled all the way back to square one, and the only perceived solution was another booster jab from abroad in the form of Warren Gatland. The man from the Waikato went on to post the most successful record in Welsh professional history over the next 11 years [2008-2019], taking his charges on an unprecedented five-match winning run over South Africa, claiming four Six Nations titles and reaching two World Cup semi-finals along the way.
When he retired from national duty at the end of the 2019 World Cup, the whirlpool of failure was waiting to suck a once-proud nation down into yet darker depths. Aucklander Wayne Pivac delivered a 38% win rate before Wales reached out for the Gatty-fix again. This time around, the box of pills was empty. Gatland has led Wales on a 12-match losing run, one record he would prefer to erase from his CV.
Australia have been following in Wales’ footsteps, roughly seven years behind. By 2005, the initial burnish of the Eddie Jones effect had worn off. His successor John ‘Knuckles’ Connolly first discovered the Wallaby players “like beaten down sheepdogs. If you walked in a room, they would have their heads down and were scared to do anything. There was no leadership. There was no development. It was a total void that took nearly a year to rebuild.”
It also took less than 12 months for Connolly himself to come under the media microscope, with 1984 Grand-Slammer Simon Poidevin lamenting the move towards “a conservative, risk-averse game. He should fall on his sword. We can’t do that. The Australian public will only support the Wallabies playing the way they have historically.”
Like ‘Ted’ in Wales, ex-Crusaders supremo Robbie Deans was the outstanding Super Rugby candidate when he was appointed as Australia’s first overseas head coach in 2008. Deans went on to earn the only win rate above 50% [58%] for Wallaby coaches in the past 17 years, leading Australia to its last Tri Nations victory and a World Cup semi-final in 2011. But Deans resigned amid rancour two years later, with ex-Wallaby great David Campese proclaiming: “unfortunately Robbie Deans has struggled to understand how we play the game in Australia.”
Deans was not alone in his misapprehension. When the Wallabies cycled back to a natural-born Aussie, Ewen McKenzie, things didn’t get better – they got worse. The Randwick man was the victim of some spectacular politicking worthy of the Ruddock era in Wales, finding himself among the coaching homeless in only his second year in the role.
Australia has followed Wales down the rabbit hole ever since, see-sawing between the home-grown and the Kiwi import: a violently passionate six-year affair with Waratah Michael Cheika followed by a far more sober transaction with another man of the Waikato, Dave Rennie; Rennie himself uprooted less than 10 months before the 2023 World Cup by the return of the prodigal son, Eddie Jones. Knuckles again: “How did we end up with Eddie again? He is full of it. He talks a great game but plays a terrible one. He was the captain’s pick by a chairman who just came into the job. It’s a bloody disaster.”
Within 10 months, the shooting arc of ‘Comet Eddie’ was spent, and another New Zealander was brought in to save the sinking ship. The story will be all too familiar to followers of Welsh rugby, they will be nodding their heads in rueful acknowledgement. In practice, adding overseas IP has only accelerated the destruction of coach education within the country, and succession planning – the seamless handover of power back to a native coach – has thus far proved to be an impossible task for both nations.
And that is Schmidt’s primary objective now: to pick exactly the right moment to empower to an Australian supremo as his natural successor, at a moment when the vital rugby signs in the country are burgeoning rather than dwindling. How, and when to leave the game in better state than the one in which he found it. Australia stands on the cusp of doing both itself and Wales a great favour, by discovering that elusive element in its coaching framework: continuity.
The recent game between the two nations in Cardiff represented probably Australia’s peak performance on tour, and it will have given Schmidt plenty of food for thought in relation to the blend of his back-five forward unit for the Lions. Nick Frost called the lineouts from number four, Will Skelton at five and an extra lineout option in the shape of Seru Uru at six instead of skipper Harry Wilson.
In this earlier article I showed just how Australia drove the maul so efficiently with Skelton in the second row after the catch had been made, but the ease with which the Wallabies won their own throw [12 out of 13] and pressured the Wales delivery [four steals out of 12] with one fewer receiver in the team was a surprise.
It was also a credit to the impeccable design fashioned by Wallaby lineout guru Geoff Parling. With the starters on the field, the throw was spread between Frost [five takes], Uru [four] with Bobby Valetini as the third option with three takes. How did the ex-Tigers, England and Lions lineout captain get the right people to the right spots before the formation of the drive?
One of the keys to the improvement of the Wallaby lineout has been the development of Valetini and Wilson as the third option, and Australia were twice successful using the same formation with a throw to Bobby V at the tail. Skelton starts at the front but shifts up the line past Uru and Frost to become the short-side lifter on the Wallaby eight. When you see this picture, you know the drive must convert.
When Uru was the target in the middle, Skelton did not have to move from his post to front-lift for the Queenslander.
By the end of the clip the big man has split the Welsh D asunder and there is fresh air ahead of him.
Throwing to Frost? No problem, just drop Seru out of the middle of the line and let the La Rochelle leviathan move up to block.
Want to drive for the corner flag? Simply leave the French-based giant where he is, at the front of the line to lead the drive out.
Can Australia get it right before the Lions arrive, with their army of 40,000 fans in support next July? A critical part of the process will be Schmidt’s decision about his own future, and the timing of his departure from the Wallabies.
Is there a home-grown coach ready to take on the full weight of that responsibility, and will there finally be some continuity between foreigner and native? Can New Zealander usher in Australian, or for that matter Welshman, with no loss of coaching impetus? The past in both countries utters a resounding ‘no’ but history is always ripe for the changing. As Schmidt put it so succinctly, “we know more about the bottom of the ocean than what goes on between our ears.”
