I GOT TO KNOW THE SOFTER JOE
Former Scotland captain Jason White insists there is another side to Ireland’s fearsome head coach
FOR THOSE accustomed to Joe Schmidt as an exacting head coach demanding perfection, Jason White’s memories will come as a surprise. He remembers the Schmidt who coached him for a year at Clermont as the softer side of a management team headed by Vern Cotter.
‘He was very much the good cop, with Vern the grumpy bugger,’ laughs White.
That was back in 2009, the first of White’s three years in France.
By the end of that season, in May 2010, Schmidt was preparing to leave for Ireland with Clermont still jubilant after winning the Top 14 for the first time in their history.
Those months gave former Scotland captain White an understanding of Schmidt and his methods, but his knowledge of the coaching teams in competition next Saturday is much more extensive than that.
The first three years of a distinguished Test career that would eventually bring him 77 caps – 19 as captain – White spent playing alongside Gregor Townsend.
Even though Scotland struggled, often dreadfully for long stretches of his time, Townsend was a star by then. That was thanks to his performances on the 1997 Lions tour, but it was also due to his style.
He committed to playing rugby in an imaginative way that often backfired, drawing derision from some supporters. But he stayed faithful to his beliefs – a determination that has also been in evidence since he became a head coach.
In assessing his former teammate, White begins with the difficult start Townsend made to life at Glasgow. He was appointed to replace the popular Sean Lineen, and when they lost their opening matches of the 2012/13 season, he took significant criticism.
‘I think they lost their first couple of games,’ recalls White. ‘I’m sure there would have been a little bit of pressure on him but he stuck at it and really forged a way. He was a fantastic player. The interesting thing is I played alongside him and he was one of the older heads but he loved a beer, loved the craic, loved getting involved in the fun side.
‘But he has had to change that to a degree, for what is necessary for his team to perform. So he has changed and developed as a person to become one of our leading coaches.’
That difficult beginning parallels Schmidt’s start at Leinster. They lost three of their first four matches in the autumn of 2010, a period in which Test players were being slowly reintroduced after the rigours of a summer tour, and the entire squad was still getting used to Schmidt’s methods.
That didn’t deter some critics, and their attacks must constitute the most absurd examples of punditry in the history of Irish sport – no little achievement in an archive stuffed full of nonsense.
Schmidt and Townsend both survived, of course. The Scotsman took Glasgow to the semifinals of the Pro14 in his first season, where they lost to Leinster.
The same team defeated them in the final a year later, but 12 months on they finally triumphed. Last season, he guided them into the knock-out rounds of the European Cup for the first time.
Schmidt, of course, turned Leinster into probably the best team the tournament has seen.
White (below) describes Townsend changing from freespirited player to adapt to coaching, but he notes that Schmidt’s transformation into an elite head coach would not have been predicted by those who played under him while he assisted Cotter in France.
‘There were probably questions from the group in Clermont wondering if Joe had the edge to be the hard-nosed head coach. Very similar to the questions about Gregor, and they have both proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they both do.’ There is no rugby figure in the world who wouldn’t struggle to look authoritative compared to the granite-faced Cotter, but it was Schmidt’s decency as much as his rugby acumen that has stayed with White.
‘I probably got to know the softer side of Joe, because he would speak to me in English, as opposed to his interactions with the main group, which were in French,’ he remembers.
‘I was working on my French still at the time. But Joe is such a lovely guy: he was so welcoming to us as a family. They lived probably 300 metres away from us, and they were very kind and welcoming to my wife Beverly when we arrived. ‘He’s a good man.’ Schmidt will spend the next six days tailoring his tactics for the dynamic challenge Scotland will bring to Lansdowne Road on Saturday afternoon.
There will be a deal of analysis anticipating the match which will focus on the structured style favoured by Schmidt versus the more instinctive game championed by Townsend.
Both descriptions are made in broad strokes, but the weaknesses in Scotland’s determination to attack at all costs were repeatedly exposed by Wales in the first round of the championship.
Ireland will be even more accurate and relentless than the Welsh were if they can send Scotland into retreat.
‘They solved their jigsaw puzzle,’ is how White puts Schmidt’s approach, contrasting the game he played with rich back-line talent at Leinster with a more structured tactic with Ireland. ‘Like a lot of good teams do, they’ve found their style. They tweak it from week to week but it’s what they know to be successful.’
Two Six Nations titles, as well as victories against New Zealand, England, Australia and South Africa in the past two seasons justify Schmidt’s decisions.
Scotland are stirring great excitement among their support, but theirs remains a tentative revolution.
A resounding win against England in Murrayfield has stoked optimism to temperatures even higher than those reached following wins against Australia home and away last year. They also ran New Zealand to five points in Edinburgh. Their progress is obvious, and a long time coming.
‘One factor for me is that we’ve finally got to grips with how to run a club professionally,’ says White. ‘We were poor in the initial stages of professionalism in Scotland. We
didn’t adapt to what it meant to be a professional rugby player and the guys probably got over-trained in the beginning, for example.
‘We didn’t manage to connect with the local clubs, for them to give up their players (to the four regional teams initially formed) and their supporters to come and support it.
‘We lost a lot of ground for a good few years after professionalism came in.’
There has been no obvious structural change in how the game is run in Scotland. There remain two professional teams, and the national team really does seem to be benefitting from the work done by Lineen and then Townsend in nurturing an outstanding number of talents at Glasgow.
‘We’re winning some games because we’ve got some fantastic players,’ says White. ‘Is that because they are fantastic players or because they have been taught well and developed?
‘It’s a bit of both. Finn Russell and Stuart Hogg are outstanding players. Huw Jones is coming through, Jonny Gray, Stuart McInally, there are a few different reasons for it all.’
Scotland’s recovery remains fragile, however. One of the biggest problems they confront in the Six Nations is their away form, which is only one more reason why they are anticipating their visit to Dublin.
Since the Five Nations became six for the 2000 championship, the Scots have played 46 matches away from home. They have lost 40 of them, winning just six.
Four of those wins came, unsurprisingly, in Italy, with one in Cardiff and the shock they sprung on Ireland in Croke Park in 2010, in the last Test match played at that venue.
That is a dreadful record for a team with grand ambitions.
‘We went down to Twickenham last year full of hope and expectation but England put 60 points on us. We beat Australia down in Australia during the summer, had a strong November series and looked really good.’ said White.
‘But then we didn’t perform in the first round of the championship. This is our chance, if we want to be serious contenders for the Six Nations this year and in the years going forward.
‘I would obviously love us to win but we need to put up a performance that shows we have the edge to perform away from home, and that we’re not just a team that turn it on at home.’
Scotland are buoyant, Ireland no less confident. Something will give, but White knows it won’t be the principles of the two men in charge. *Jason White is an ambassador for the charity Sporting Start.