NZR keen on Schmidt, whenever he is ready
Joe Schmidt won’t be coaching the All Blacks next year.
At the Six Nations launch yesterday, Ireland’s Kiwi coach reconfirmed his intention to take an indefinite break from coaching after this year’s Rugby World Cup.
‘‘That is certainly the shortterm plan, to not be involved in coaching,’’ Schmidt said.
‘‘Certainly not for 12 months and I’d say quite likely longer than that. We have a couple of family-related projects that we want to work our way through. I don’t spend a lot of time at home already, so it’s probably high time I did.’’
While many had hoped New Zealand Rugby might be able to dangle the carrot of the All Blacks in front of Schmidt to delay the 53-year-old’s early rugby retirement, Schmidt’s statement came as no surprise to New Zealand Rugby chief executive Steve Tew.
‘‘We’ve always kept in touch with as many of our coaches around the world and here in New Zealand as we can,’’ Tew said yesterday.
‘‘Joe has been in front of some cameras around the Six Nations this week, so he’s reiterated what he said earlier and that is that he wants to have a break.’’
With that being said, Tew was hopeful it was ‘not now’, rather than ‘never’ in terms of a potential return to New Zealand for Schmidt.
‘‘He’s got a commitment to spend more time with his family and we’ll respect that, but as we’ve always said, we hope he hasn’t retired for good.’’
So that eliminates one person from the race, with All Blacks assistant coach Ian Foster and Crusaders coach Scott Robertson considered frontrunners.
Neither those two, nor any other potential candidates, will get to officially put their case forward to Tew and NZR until after the World Cup.
‘‘We’ve got to make sure people understand the process because coaches are making decisions now,’’ Tew said.
‘‘Now that Steve has confirmed he’s finishing, we could have gone through this now and appointed a coach for next year, but that potentially could have had quite a significant impact on the current environment, so it was chosen to wait until after the World Cup.
‘‘We think that gives the World Cup campaign the clearest run it can. If we miss out on a couple of candidates because they make other decisions, well that’s unfortunate, but if they weren’t that committed, they probably weren’t right for us anyway.’’
That process will include a ‘‘thorough but quick’’ review of the World Cup campaign, which, at the latest, will conclude in the final on November 2, with the hope of appointing a coach before the end of the year.