Schmidt’s plan for World Cup would be a step in the wrong direction
Schmidt’s plan for two-yearly joust is logical but off key
JOE SCHMIDT was back in the spotlight yesterday, the former Ireland coach giving a wide-ranging video interview to McSport which quickly did the rounds.
As ever, the New Zealander did not give too much away — no dramatic announcements about his next step in rugby, no lashing out at the way it all ended with Ireland — but his reasoned thoughts on scrapping the World Cup in favour of a biennial global tournament deserve further examination.
Of course, a variation on this idea has been floated before — World Rugby have already expressed their desire for an annual 12-team Nations Championship but it met stern opposition on the grounds of corralled elitism and its effect on the treasured Six Nations.
Schmidt’s version of the plan revolves around a fairer appreciation of supremacy on the basis of more regular assessment.
‘If you had, even biennually, a global Test match championship it would be a lot better indicator of the best team than the World Cup, which is whichever is the best team on the day,’ Schmidt told McSport.
‘That is part of the allure, it’s a great competition, but this would have a little bit more credence than the world rankings as well, which everyone finds a little bit hard to understand.’
You can see where he is coming from, certainly based on his own experiences during his six-year term as Ireland head coach between 2013 and 2019.
Schmidt did remarkable things with the national side — history altering achievements that included a first win over New Zealand, a first Test win in South Africa, back-to-back Six Nations titles, a Grand Slam and bringing Ireland to No1 in the world rankings. A phenomenal record by any measure.
However, the reality is that, for all those achievements, Schmidt’s outstanding tenure will always have an asterisk attached — Ireland’s failure at the two World Cups on his watch.
In 2015, Ireland’s progress was brought to a shuddering halt by injury and mental frailty in defence against a rampant Argentina outfit in the quarter-final.
In 2019, Ireland were again found wanting psychologically — appearing to be cowed by the pressures of rugby’s biggest stage and the enormous weight of expectation they had shouldered after their stupendous run in 2018.
For a meticulous planner like Schmidt, a coach who is defined by his desire to ‘control the controllables’, you can understand why he harbours no great affection for the World Cup, where years of preparation can go out the window in an instant.
But that is the beauty of intense, knock-out competition crammed into a few weeks — it is the unpredictability of it all that makes it so enticing.
Lockdown has brought plenty of opportunities for nostalgic review and you think of Denmark’s incredible run to football’s European Championship title in 1992, having only gained entry to the tournament when Yugoslavia pulled out, or Greece stunning Europe’s heavyweights in the same competition in 2004.
Being ‘the best team on the day’, as Schmidt puts it, is part of the romance of sport.
Were South Africa the best team in the world in 1995, 2007 or last year? No, but they earned that title on those three occasions because they had the mental strength and application for the peculiar requirements of World Cup success. It’s the ability to adapt to changing environments and overcome each obstacle as it presents itself.
That is something Ireland have never mastered, displaying a remarkable capacity for implosion since the first World Cup in 1987, regardless of the talent at their disposal or preparation levels — both of which have improved incrementally over the years since professionalism took hold.
THERE is a psychological frailty at the heart of Irish rugby which has been exposed every four years — undoing all the progress made in between — and that is what makes cracking the code and reaching a first World Cup semifinal such an intriguing quest.
Introducing a global tournament every two years would, by definition, reduce the significance of scaling the summit. I
True, it would certainly increase Ireland’s chances of success — if Schmidt’s side had contested the World Cup in the autumn of 2018 instead of a year later, it is hard to see who could have stopped them given the surety and dominance they displayed throughout that year.
By the time they arrived in Japan, that confidence had drained away — from players and management — and the displays against Japan and New Zealand were an embarrassing and unfortunate footnote on what had been an incredible time for Irish rugby under Schmidt.
But the upside is a further whetting of the appetite for the next tilt in France in 2023 and the fascination involved in plotting a course between now and then.
The recent hiatus in live matches has left administrators with plenty of time to plot an altered future. While this has generally been viewed as an opportunity to improve the game, there is a danger also that too much time could lead to too much unnecessary meddling.
There has been wild talk of reducing the number of players to 13 to free up space (a disastrous suggestion as rugby already too closely apes the mind-numbing monotony of its league cousin) and relentless discussion about aligning the global calendar.
Revisiting the calendar is certainly worthwhile — especially the frequently flaccid summer and November tours between hemispheres — but there must be no conceding to pressure from the southern hemisphere nations frustrated by the sterility of their own competitions.
That means the Six Nations must be protected and, most importantly, the World Cup has to retain its status as the ultimate challenge — just because we can’t crack it doesn’t mean we want to give up on it. Or, to put it another way and paraphrase George Orwell…four years good, two years bad.
Being ‘best on the day’ is part of the romance of sport