Insight into the mind of an influential figure
ORDINARY JOE – the diary of Joe Schmidt is split into three sections, beginning with his youth, teaching career and early coaching days in New Zealand. Part two offers insights into his coaching values and beliefs, while the third part is a diary of the 2018 Grand Slam and this year’s World Cup.
The book, published by Penguin, reveals that a potential six-week suspension for Devin Toner was a contributory factor not to include the long-serving Leinster and Irish lock in Ireland’s 31-man squad for the 2019 World Cup.
The former Ireland head coach reveals that the Irish management had been alerted that the citing commissioner was looking at a late incident in Ireland’s 22-17 win over Wales in Cardiff, when Toner made shoulder contact with a prone Rob Evans, the day before submitting the squad to World Rugby.
‘We hadn’t noticed the incident at the time, but we reviewed the incident and it didn’t look good,’ writes Schmidt. ‘We had been warned by Alan Rolland, in his presentation to us, that any shoulder-to-head contact was likely to have a starting entry point of a six-week suspension.
‘It was a difficult call, but we decided to go with Tadgh Beirne, who can play both second-row and back-row, and Jean Kleyn, the only specialist tighthead scrummaging second-row in the squad.’
The selection of Schmidt’s final squad after six years as Ireland’s head coach is contained in the fourth and concluding section, ‘RWC Diary’.
Although not an autobiography, part one is devoted to growing up in New Zealand, as the third of eight children in Kawakwa, Te
Aroha and Woodville in the country’s North
Island. This section also goes through his playing carer and coaching career in New
Zealand.
The second quarter of the book deals with his coaching career in France with
Clermont Auvergne and then Leinster, before the second half is taken up with a diary of the
2018 Grand Slam and the 2019 World Cup.
The book gives ample evidence of his restless mind, his obsessive attention to details and his all-consuming addiction with every aspect of the sport, not least the multiple issues which can prove a distraction off the pitch.
The media is a recurring and obvious one. Schmidt had only three hours sleep after the relief of the opening 27-3 victory over Scotland. He sensed that the Japan game was a hard sell after Ireland’s two big wins there in 2017 and their respective opening performances.
He hardly slept after the Japan defeat due to the ‘knot in my stomach’. He was not very forthcoming in his explanation only to stress that Ireland had lacked the same tempo and energy as Japan in the second half. There is little reflection on why Ireland suffered a shock defeat to the hosts and then exited after being hammered by New Zealand in the quarter-finals.
It’s not until the very final stages of the book that Schmidt briefly considers what went wrong, touching upon what he mentioned in the post-match press conference after that New Zealand game, that Ireland became too focused on the World Cup from too far out, failing to prioritise the 2019 Six Nations. There is also the fraught and difficult road to the Grand Slam, the Ulster trial, the Sexton drop goal, the referees and the weather. It details that build-up to Ireland’s opening game of the Six Nations and how it had been affected by the trial of Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding in Belfast, which started that week, and admits that there was such a furore around the appearance at the trial of Rory Best and Ian Henderson, that Rory Best not only wanted to stand down from the captaincy, but even considered retiring as well.
There are other poignant human aspects to this book, perhaps most notably when he receives a card from his mother, who passed away before the World Cup, on the morning of the quarter-final. The card has ‘a message she wrote when she realised that she wasn’t going to live long enough to see the World Cup. She wrote that she was ‘so proud of what you have achieved but even more proud of what you have become’.’
Overall, it is an insight into the fascinating personality of the man who has been the single most influential figure in Irish rugby over the last decade.
BRENDAN FURLONG
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