SIMON LEWIS: Schmidt faces new learning curve

As impressive as he has been since he took the Leinster job three seasons ago, Joe Schmidt strode into the Ireland hot seat with the aim of ushering in an era of new hope for the national team.

Like the situation he found himself in when he left his assistant coach’s job under Vern Cotter at ASM Clermont Auvergne for Donnybrook, Schmidt will leave a position he was very comfortable in for one that presents entirely different challenges and pressures.

Three years ago the New Zealander had felt no desire to become a head coach yet ended up guiding Leinster to back-to-back Heineken Cup victories, transforming an already proven team of winners into something even more impressive, playing with greater verve and conviction, if that were possible.

It has been a coaching career, so far, of perfect decision-making, the right moves at the right times and yesterday, he inherited an Ireland team on the up, even if recent results do not necessarily indicate that. Former head coach Declan Kidney had his detractors who successfully persuaded his bosses at the IRFU that he was not worth another two years in the job he poured his heart and soul into. Yet his contribution to the Irish cause has given Schmidt some excellent foundations for a successful World Cup campaign in England in two years and if the new man at the helm does take Ireland beyond the quarter-finals, he owes Kidney his gratitude for helping him do so.

Still, if Kidney is not the man to fly the flag, the IRFU have found the ideal man to continue the job. Watching Ireland over the past three years there was always the feeling that the national set-up was not getting as much out of Leinster’s glittering array of backline talent as Schmidt was back at their province. Now Schmidt has the chance to work with those same players on the Test stage and if he can get Jonny Sexton, Rob Kearney, Luke Fitzgerald and, he will hope, Brian O’Driscoll, playing the Leinster way in a green jersey then it won’t be just supporters of the Blue persuasion cheering him to the Aviva Stadium’s rafters.

And if he can do to the games of Simon Zebo, Luke Marshall and Paddy Jackson what he has managed with Sexton, Ian Madigan and company — taking good players and making them something so much more — then his achievements will be rewarded by success for the national team.

Ireland has some great young talent at its disposal and not just in Leinster. Witness Munster’s Heineken Cup run to the semi-finals and the way that province’s next generation — Zebo, Conor Murray, Tommy O’Donnell, Peter O’Mahony, Dave Kilcoyne and Mike Sherry — have evolved into something that will be the nucleus of a successful side perhaps to rival the double Heineken Cup champions of half a decade ago. Or Ulster’s burgeoning talents Jackson, Luke Marshall, Iain Henderson and Craig Gilroy and the likes of Dave McSharry and Robbie Henshaw at Connacht.

Schmidt has been charged with bringing those talents onto the Test arena and moulding them into Grand Slam winners and potential World Cup contenders, of developing a team to rival the Southern Hemisphere titans on a consistent basis.

Indeed consistency is the thing Ireland most crave after a three years of one step forward-two steps back momentum, a World Cup pool win over Australia followed by a miserable quarter-final exit to Wales, a rampaging defeat of Argentina and then Wales followed by disappointment for the rest of the last Six Nations.

Schmidt has to end that inconsistency and pray his stars do not suffer the injury nightmare that helped to bring down Kidney. The Kiwi referred to his predecessor’s bad luck at his introductory press conference yesterday — then offered a hope he would not be similarly afflicted.

Good luck with that one and also working under a media scrutiny so much more intense than anything he has experienced as the head coach of a perennially successful provincial side.

Adjusting his workaholic tendencies in the day-to-day hubbub of club rugby to the slow, slow, quick, quick, slow of Test coaching will also be a new learning curve for Schmidt but, as he referred to yesterday, the parental stresses of caring for a young child with epilepsy will ensure that new time at his disposal will not be idled away.

Schmidt may miss the daily schedule of his provincial coaching career but he still has his hands full, in so many ways. We wish him well.