Schmidt’s Golden Age lost some of its glitter in last few games
Joe Schmidt had the luxury of choosing his own terms of departure and not many in his line of work get to do that when it comes to elite-level professional sport.
What he could not control, however, was that his players would perform so badly when it mattered most.
So Ireland’s most successful head coach has taken charge of his final match on the IRFU payroll and will hand the reins to current defence coach Andy Farrell before taking a sabbatical from the game after six-and-a-half years at the helm.
You can be sure that whatever time the 53-year-old decides to stay away from the game which has consumed him throughout his adult life, Saturday night’s miserable World Cup quarter-final exit to New Zealand will occupy an awful lot of his thinking time.
This tournament has been a constant spectre at the feast that has otherwise been a testament to Schmidt’s remarkable impact on Irish rugby.
He delivered two Heineken Cups, a Challenge Cup and the PRO12 title to Leinster between 2010-13 before accepting the national team head coaching role in April of that season as successor to Declan Kidney.
Back-to-back Six Nations championships followed in 2014 and 15 before the first speed bump came at the 2015 World Cup in England and Wales.
Like Kidney in 2011, he steered Ireland through an undefeated pool campaign only to come up short in the knockout stages. The campaign, though, came at a cost as Schmidt lost his team leaders to injury, defensive leader Jared Payne, back-row leader Peter O’Mahony, on-field general Johnny Sexton and talismanic captain Paul O’Connell as well as Sean O’Brien to suspension for the quarter-final.
It left Ireland exposed and Argentina seized their opportunity, sending Schmidt and his players packing with a 43-20 defeat that shaped the coach’s thinking for the four years that followed and perhaps contributed to their downfall.
There were some glorious highs along the way - a first Test win in South Africa in 2016 and that historic day in Chicago as the All Blacks were felled for the first time in 111 years of trying that November.
And then came the greatest year of all, 2018 bringing the Grand Slam, a series victory over the Wallabies in Australia and a first home win over New Zealand last November, earning Ireland World Rugby’s Team of the Year award and rewarding Schmidt with the Coach of the Year accolade.
It all seemed part of the perfect upward curve toward this World Cup as 2019 arrived but even then there was a nagging concern that perhaps Ireland had peaked too soon.
The first Saturday in February gave grist to that mill as England put in a rampant Dublin performance on the opening weekend of the Six Nations, while Wales on the final weekend confirmed the suspicions, Ireland’s excellent consistency having deserted them.
Schmidt admitted as much on Saturday night - that Ireland had sacrificed their game-to-game focus on the altar of an all-out assault on the World Cup.
It was evident also in August when England gave Ireland another torrid afternoon, this time at Twickenham in the biggest defeat of Schmidt’s tenure.
Yet Ireland gave us hope once more as they regathered momentum with warm-up wins in Cardiff and then Dublin against Wales that built into a resounding 27-3 pool-opening, bonus-point victory over Scotland in Yokohama.
Yet again, though, the inconsistency came back to bite them six days later as Ireland undid all the optimism with a passive, lack lust re performance as they let slip a well-deserved 12-3 lead over Japan to suffer the shock defeat of the tournament at the hands of the Brave Blossoms.
The win over Samoa restored some belief that 2019 was all about building towards the knockout stages, that all the angst and the concern was part of a grand Schmidt scheme to get his team to the quarter-final and put in the greatest performance of his six-and-a-half years in charge as Ireland ended the phoney war of the last 11 months and turned into world-beaters again.
They certainly talked a good game and some of us were guilty of believing the hype ahead of Saturday’s clash with the All Blacks.
So what a disappointment for Schmidt to be served up this desperately poor performance as his final game.
The New Zealander admitted he felt “a little bit broken” by the 46--14 defeat as New Zealand turned on the turbochargers to exploit a litany of mistakes from a side that failed to get out of first gear.
History repeated itself at the World Cup for Schmidt, four years on from the Argentina loss he had worked so hard to guard against.
“You tend to carry your scars a lot more than your successes and those scars are deep,” he said on Saturday night at Tokyo Stadium.
“That’s why I’m a little bit broken. I think when I get some distance to reflect on maybe 75 Test matches and we’ve won 74% of them, there’s been some incredibly good days. I don’t think they get washed away by two defeats in days where we are incredibly disappointed.
I felt we had good reason four years ago when we lost our leadership before the quarter-final. Today, we just met a team who are number one in the world for a reason. If you’re not on the money you’re going to be incredibly disappointed and I am.
Which is why this one will definitely hurt more because Ireland can have little excuse for such a flat and error-riddled performance.
Time will prove kind to Schmidt when he reflects on his tenure, one that lifted Ireland’s standing in the game to previously unsealed heights, but this will feel raw for quite some time.
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