Barnes: Gatland should have taken Schmidt to Oz

The make-up of Warren Gatland’s Lions playing squad may still be exercising opinions 10 days after its announcement but Stuart Barnes believes the Kiwi biggest error is the omission of Joe Schmidt from his backroom team for the tour to Australia.

Gatland, as he has with his players, opted largely for a group of coaches with whom he has an established working relationship and so it is that Rob Howley will oversee the Lions’ attack for the 10-match trip to Hong Kong and Australia.

“I’m not going to change what I have said from day one of this season and that is that Joe Schmidt should be the attack coach,” said Barnes yesterday at a Sky Sports event in Dublin. “I understand there is not much time to learn on a Lions tour and you need to trust your other coaches. I understand that, and Rob Howley is a good coach, but the Rob Howley thing is very similar to Matt O’Connor: they are both decent coaches and I have got nothing against them. But Schmidt is different class.

“We talk about Jonny Sexton but Jonny Sexton still very rarely does for Ireland what he does for Leinster and it is not because he is taking a step up, it is because it is a slightly different way that he is coached. I don’t know whether Rob Howley will say ‘go and make it yours, go and make it happen’. I know Joe Schmidt would.”

Schmidt will instead hope to make it to North America to run the rule over his soon-to-be new Ireland team leaving O’Connor an unenviable task in living up to the standards set by the former schoolteacher at his old stomping ground.

Few people have followed O’Connor’s career at Leicester Tigers as closely as Barnes in his role as a Sky Sports pundit and the former England international believes O’Connor is facing a mission impossible in his bid to live up to Schmidt’s legacy.

“He didn’t always agree with (Director of Rugby) Richard Cockerill about things at Leicester because Leicester have a grinding game,” Barnes said

“Matt is quite ambitious, he is quite demanding. He looks to play so he will fit in with what Leinster have been trying to do for a number of years.

“But, having said that, he’s a different-sized shoe to Joe Schmidt’s. Schmidt is outstanding. He should be in Australia (with the Lions) and I think Ireland have got the right man. It is not knocking Matt O’Connor to say Leinster are going to lose something special. He is good but he ain’t that good.”

It is worth pointing out that much the same was said of Schmidt when he took over a Leinster side that had won its first Heineken Cup and reached the semi-finals a year later under Michael Cheika and Paul Wallace believes that, in O’Connor, they have again got the right man.

Leinster’s senior players met with O’Connor prior to his appointment and Wallace spoke about the input Leo Cullen and Shane Jennings would have had given their time spent with the Tigers at Welford Road in the mid-2000s. The former Saracens and Leinster prop believes the cultures of the two clubs are very much in sync — even if the playing styles differ somewhat — and Scott Quinnell also believes that this will smooth O’Connor’s transition across the Irish Sea.

“It’s one of the hardest jobs in rugby,” said the former Wales forward. “The amount of success they have had in the last few years has been incredible ... but if you are going to come in there from somewhere then Leicester is not a bad place to come from. Because their mindset in Leicester – they way they train and play and the whole aura around the club — is about success and being the best.”