Haig eager to pit wits against his fellow Kiwi

GEORGIAN coach Milton Haig and Joe Schmidt caught up on Friday night in Dublin, old Kiwi buddies reflecting on the marvellous way life has turned out in the decade since their innocent part-time coaching days at Bay of Plenty Steamers.

Haig (below) had been Vern Cotter’s backs coach for the New Zealand provincial side but when work in the newspaper advertising and design business meant a day job transfer elsewhere, he picked up the phone and called Schmidt, then a school principal, to fill the vacancy on the basis of being impressed by the one-off session the current Ireland coach had done with the Steamers the year before in 2002.

Roll the clock forward by 12 years and, with Cotter now in charge of Scotland, all three are national team coaches, suggesting there must be something magical in the Rotorua waters back home.

‘You sit back now, look at it and it’s great,’ Haig exclusively told Sportsmail following yesterday’s team run at Aviva Stadium.

‘It’s fantastic to see mates doing well in the global coaching arena. We’d a good catch-up Friday night and chatted about a few things. We didn’t exchange too much tactically but we’ll certainly sit down Sunday night and really discuss the rugby.

‘Coaching against Joe adds a little personal touch to this game. He’s got a lot more experience than I have in high-level rugby but who knows, rugby’s a funny game and we’ll see what happens on the pitch.

‘I’m not sure about scorelines; I don’t really focus on that. I focus on basically us doing what we trained. A good day at the office would be making sure we implement what we’ve practiced and front up mentally and physically – and I know we will front up physically.

‘If we get our processes right then we’ll give ourselves a good chance. This is a big occasion for us and I don’t want the boys to get overawed,’ he continued, adding that Ireland’s wholesale changes offers incentive for the Eastern Europeans to fare better than originally envisaged.

‘It [changes] always does. You’ve got guys making their Test debuts, guys who played only two or three games at Test level, so that makes a massive difference.

‘But the reality is that Ireland have got the ability to do that. They have got the depth of player and those players that are going to be taking the field against us are going to be very good.’

Georgia’s infamous near-miss against Ireland at in Bordeaux at the 2007 World Cup remains an energising reference point for the Six Nations B champions, but Haig himself isn’t reading too much into history.

‘The Georgians remember it very fondly but, as I keep saying to them, it’s a long, long time ago and this Irish team are totally different and their coach is a totally different person, so it will be a tough ask.’