Schmidt controls exit down to the last detail

When you are a coach who pays the closest attention to the minutest of detail and leaves as little as is humanly possible to the vagaries of chance, the manner of your departure was never really going to be a dreaded uncontrollable.

Most of the challenges that Joe Schmidt has prepared for in his spectacularly successful five-and-a-half years as Ireland head coach have gone according to plan and yesterday’s announcement that he was walking away not just from the Ireland job but coaching altogether was another example of his forensic approach to decision-making.

GOOD HANDS: Ireland head coach Joe Schmidt greeted by supporters at the Aviva Stadium: ‘I feel that Irish rugby is in good hands. The management and players have been incredible to work with and the tremendous support we have had, particularly at home in the Aviva, but where ever we have travelled has beenuplifting.’ Picture: Seb Daly.

With immaculate timing and after a relatively limited period of media speculation, Schmidt decided yesterday was the perfect moment to reveal his course of action.

He could not have scheduled it better, in the wake of four victories from four during the November Test window and the day after his and his team’s achievements, including another victory over the All Blacks, were recognised with the three main prizes at the World Rugby Awards, including personal acclaim in the form of the Coach of the Year.

“I have decided to finish coaching and will prioritise family commitments after the RWC in 2019,” Schmidt said in a statement issued by the IRFU yesterday morning.

“I feel that Irish rugby is in good hands. The management and players have been incredible to work with and the tremendous support we have had, particularly at home in the Aviva, but where ever we have travelled has been uplifting.

Thank you to the IRFU for their support and patience and thanks also to so many people who have adopted my family and me, making us feel part of the community here in Ireland.

Schmidt will now give his all to the role for the 11 remaining months of his contract, taking in a Six Nations title defence and a second World Cup campaign.

“There are some inspiring challenges over the next 11 months so there’s plenty of motivation for me to continue working hard, alongside the other management staff so that the team can be as competitive as possible,” he added.

When his time is up, he will simply walk away to devote that famously wholehearted attention to his family, including those loved ones at home in New Zealand. And Schmidt will pass the stewardship of his “Carton House family” as he refers to the Irish camp he has overseen since 2013 on to an in-house successor in defence coach Andy Farrell.

One can imagine the weight lifting from his shoulders after the decision was rubber-stamped following a family brunch on Sunday, further still when he informed his immediate boss IRFU performance director David Nucifora of his intentions and then slumped into a chair and watched the live stream from Monaco as first Peter O’Mahony accepted the World Rugby award on his behalf, quickly followed by Rory Best stepping onto the stage to receive Ireland’s Team of the Year award and then return with a speechless Johnny Sexton, his voice the victim of a throat infection, to express the newly-crowned World Player of the Year’s gratitude for the prize last won by an Irishman in 2001 by Keith Wood at the inaugural awards ceremony.

Never before had Irish Rugby been so lauded, and it is all down to Joe Schmidt. Ireland is grateful to the 53-year-old for that and should be confident that he will continue to deliver in the remaining months of his tenure.

Transitions from one coaching regime to the next in sport are fraught with difficulty as the FAI could found with its much-criticised decision to name a new manager for the Republic of Ireland at the same time as naming his successor two years down the line.

In rugby too, it can go horribly wrong, as Connacht found out less than a year after Pat Lam had delivered a remarkable PRO12 title to the Westerners when the New Zealander announced he was off to Bristol at the end of the season.

The province never recovered its mojo with a dead-man walking in charge and is only this season finding its feet once more under the stewardship of Andy Friend, a new head coach appointed only after Lam’s successor Kieran Keane proved to be a less-than-perfect replacement.

Yet appointing a member of Schmidt’s coaching ticket as his successor looks like a sharp piece of management by Nucifora and IRFU chief executive Philip Browne, lessening the potential upheaval with a chain of succession and a continuity, or so it seems, in terms of philosophy.

You sense Schmidt would not have had it any other way, having earlier this month stressed the terms under which he would reach his decision as regards his employers.

“You can’t let it linger, for two reasons really,” Schmidt said in Chicago two days before the Italy match.

“One, if I’m staying I want the clarity going forward and if I’m not staying I want the clarity for the IRFU because I think half the job is what gets done under your watch, the other half of the job is how you leave it so that somebody else can pick it up.

And so I want nice clarity either way.

By announcing his decision a year out from his departure, Schmidt has ejected the elephant from the room, and given everyone involved the clarity to get on with their jobs, his successor included. Just like he planned it.