Joe Schmidt - Ireland's new head coach, confirmed!!!

http://www.irishrugby.ie/news/29025.php

Great news. Press conference at 4.

Great news, could'nt have hoped for better! Knows the irish game and structure, plays exciting rugby, proven track record, and is appointed at a time when Ireland have some of the best prospects in the NH coming through the four provinces. Depending on the coaching team he can bring in, and the IRFU not putting the shackles on him too much, I'm optimistic about the national team for the first time in a while.

Well if Ireland start playing anything like Leinster, we're in for some interesting times ahead

I think Ireland will be reinvigorated by this.

Really looking forward to Joe's rein - looking forward to seeing where he can take us.
I reckon we will see less heated provincial debate on the Ireland threads too.

Great news, loving it.

Fantastic news. Excellent coach who can only be positive for Ireland. Onwards and upwards

I'll pray for you Joe. No not that you're a success..... that you live through it all! Irish coaching is an adventure only for the very brave. And you are.

Both for him and for us, I hope he sees where it can all be turned around and I hope the players fall in behind him from whatever Province. Don't whine when you're not picked for every game - do always perform as passionately for Ireland as your Province when you are.

If everyone is on board and ready to have an Irish adventure that might actually work this time (and nobody is calling for us to be Number 1 in the world! - but some nice strong performances and a steady rhythm) then with Schmidt it just might happen.

This appointment could be really bad news.







For all Ireland's opponents.

gaw...only England, Scotland, France and SA to go for world domination...

Taylorman wrote:gaw...only England, Scotland, France and SA to go for world domination...

Ireland have had a Kiwi before as headman...we ain't a new convert. His name was.....hmmmmm...now what was his name again?.... That bloody Lions fella.

I'm excited about this, the way he encourages his teams to play should be more suited to the talent we have in the provinces, hope he is allowed to bring in his coaching team as he sees fit and not people who he doesn't want. This could be very interesting, anyways congratulations to him and best of luck to him. Who will now be the next Leinster coach though?

neilthom7 wrote:I'm excited about this, the way he encourages his teams to play should be more suited to the talent we have in the provinces, hope he is allowed to bring in his coaching team as he sees fit and not people who he doesn't want. This could be very interesting, anyways congratulations to him and best of luck to him. Who will now be the next Leinster coach though?

Matt O'Connor from Tigers, formerly of the Brumbies is the front runner.

Lets all pause for a moment and think of someone who stood calm on the face pf adversity and never budged in his thinking. Lets salute...















Sin e.

Kia, I've literally started giggling like a little girl at that one... Which is very unbecoming in the middle of the library....

Where is the great man?!

Its a rough auld day for Sin with ROG (reportedly) calling it a day and an adopted Leinsterman getting the Ireland gig.

Tough times....

Giggling is fine mate. Masturbating in a library is what's really unbecoming. Even with a well used copy of the Karma Sutra with half of the pages stuck together.

Indeed especially with said copy.

rodders wrote:Where is the great man?!

Its a rough auld day for Sin with ROG (reportedly) calling it a day and an adopted Leinsterman getting the Ireland gig.

Tough times....

Rog isn't retiring. He just needed some more attention so pulled the retirement card again. He'll be playing for a couple more years.

Schmidt seemed nervous enough but all in all handled the press conference well enough. Well we got our man so that's the main thing. To do list:

Win 6 nations.
Beat all blacks.
Make Landsdowne a fortress.
World cup semis

Joe at it at the press conference, "I'd like to see him (O'Driscoll) give it one more year"

Must have seen the grin when the chants were going round the RDS on Saturday...

You're a cynical man Guns..... ROG is a straight up guy... I hear he's offered to help Jonny pack his bags for France and everything.

UlstermaninGlasgow wrote:Joe at it at the press conference, "I'd like to see him (O'Driscoll) give it one more year"

Must have seen the grin when the chants were going round the RDS on Saturday...

Joe also said he had plants placed to start the chants .....

rodders wrote:You're a cynical man Guns..... ROG is a straight up guy... I hear he's offered to help Jonny pack his bags for France and everything.

Hopefully Sexton will return the favour and help ROG pack for the retirement home.

Great decision by IRFU and by Joe Schmidt.

November internationals have become a lot more tasty looking.

Any word on who might be forming part of the new coaching team?

Pot Hale wrote:Great decision by IRFU and by Joe Schmidt.

November internationals have become a lot more tasty looking.

Any word on who might be forming part of the new coaching team?

The next four to six weeks will be needed to tidy up Leinster duties first, according to Schmidt, before he gets down to thinking fulltime about those issue. He certainly wasn't forthcoming on any names joining him yet.

A two time HC winning head coach, what cold possibly go wrong............

...................

Indeed.

Yep, Ireland made a mistake there. Should have opted for a guy without such credentials. Less investment in Belief, less disappointment when it all goes wrong.

Will Ireland ever learn.....

Look forward to seeing what he can do, should bring a good style. There will be anarchy when he picks a Leinster lad over a contentious spot in team or squad though, will be fun to watch!

He was about 9/1 to be ireland coach when kidney first resigned, back when everyone thought that Reds coach was a shoein. Shows what eveyone knows - including me!

Great news for Ireland, less so for Leinster...and possibly Leicster.

Thomond wrote:Look forward to seeing what he can do, should bring a good style. There will be anarchy when he picks a Leinster lad over a contentious spot in team or squad though, will be fun to watch!

I have a feeling he might surprise the people expecting to have a fun day with that though. I think the people who might be a little annoyed with him might indeed be Leinster fans themselves as I think he'll form the view that he can Leinsterify a stack of non-Leinster players and use them....liberally. I might be wrong but I don't get the feeling that he'll be misguidedly loyal to Leinster if a better potential player lurks further afield. I think the reason he seems genuinely enthusiastic about the job is because he sees talent all through the Provinces.

There will always be those that grumble, Thomand. Can't keep all happy all the time. Somewhere down the line that may well include me.
I reckon he will make a great coach though, and feel excited about Ireland's future now.

Lets not overlook the fact that this coach doesn't seem to have been dropped from any job he's been in so far. That might be simply a great sense of beautiful timing (getting out when the going is good -before the foundations crumble). But to date in his career he's been virtually head hunted every time.
Cotter headhunted him and brought him to Clermont
Leinster headhunted him and brought him to Ireland.
Ireland headhunted him and took him off a mildly pizsed (perhaps stronger than mild next season) Leinster
So far, nobody that's lost him wanted him to go. Good sign, so far.

I hope Ireland isn't the change in that routine for him. I hope I'm mad as hell when he leaves. I hope he leaves when we're crying out for him to stay.

Luckless Pedestrian wrote:This appointment could be really bad news.







For all Ireland's opponents.

Schmidt will find international rugby a far more challenging environment. At Leinster, given the number of internationals in the squad, his team almost always had more experience and talent than the opposition. An average coach would have done well with that squad.

At international level, apart from say Scotland and Italy, the opposition will be at least as talented as the Ireland team and therefore I do not expect a sudden upturn in fortunes.

Schmidt has also left Leinster with an aging team that are on the wane. With Ireland, he will need to bring through the next generation, but he did very little of this with Leinster, preferring to stick with the likes of darcy, jennings, boss, cullen, odriscoll, nacewa, ross etc who are all well into their 30's and were established internationals when he arrived at Leinster. Has he actually developed any new players for Ireland whilst at Leinster?

Jake White would have been a better appointment. Just as he did with south africa, he is building a new team at the brumbies with unhealded players which is exactly what Ireland requires.

All hail the messiah....

Only man for the job really. By the sound of his press conference this could be hilarious. Regardless its an astute bit of timing by Joe. He took over one team at the top and is now leaving them with the writing on the wall. Lets see how he does with a team he has to build himself...

DOD,

I'd say he's a cuter man than that. He has managed to leave Leinster now they are dipping. Ireland have better players than we're given for and I think turned a player in terms of getting new players in.

Kidney faced a staggering injury crisis the likes of which we're unlikely to see again.

I'd expect a "remarkable transformation" that suddenly coincides with the fact that Tommy Bowe, Paul O'Connell, Cian Healy, Simon Zebo, Gordon Darcy, Luke Fitzgerald are all available again.

The tension/strains already mount......

SecretFly wrote:The tension/stains already mount......

Aye, and guilty until proven innocent is the way for some. The man hasn't even had a full day as coach...

Scrumdown wrote:
Schmidt will find international rugby a far more challenging environment. At Leinster, given the number of internationals in the squad, his team almost always had more experience and talent than the opposition. An average coach would have done well with that squad.

At international level, apart from say Scotland and Italy, the opposition will be at least as talented as the Ireland team and therefore I do not expect a sudden upturn in fortunes.

Schmidt has also left Leinster with an aging team that are on the wane. With Ireland, he will need to bring through the next generation, but he did very little of this with Leinster, preferring to stick with the likes of darcy, jennings, boss, cullen, odriscoll, nacewa, ross etc who are all well into their 30's and were established internationals when he arrived at Leinster. Has he actually developed any new players for Ireland whilst at Leinster?

Jake White would have been a better appointment. Just as he did with south africa, he is building a new team at the brumbies with unhealded players which is exactly what Ireland requires.

First highlight: Same as usual then? Only this time, those other sides of equal merit won't be meeting a side so easy to predict, to prepare for and to neutralise.

Second highlight: Deja vu Munster. Everyone said they were dead and done for the next decade. Leinster looked dead and done at the weekend.

Third Highlight: Jake White. Do these guys get paid a salary to be the names always mentioned when an International jobs comes up?

Schmidt did a excellent job giving youngsters loads of gametime. I don't get where this whole leaving Leinster in a hole comes from especially when you consider he was contracted for another year.

SecretFly wrote:

First highlight: Same as usual then? Only this time, those other sides of equal merit won't be meeting a side so easy to predict, to prepare for and to neutralise.

Second highlight: Deja vu Munster. Everyone said they were dead and done for the next decade. Leinster looked dead and done at the weekend.

Third Highlight: Jake White. Do these guys get paid a salary to be the names always mentioned when an International jobs comes up?

The form of sides such as Ireland, Wales and Australia, who have a talented but limited pool of players available to them will always fluctuate more than sides such as SA, NZ, France and England. The fact of the matter is that Kidney was without half of his front line players for the majority of the six nations and as a result Ireland struggled. They weren't more predictable than say Wales who are also accused of being predicatable when they are not winning. They just had more injuries especially in the latter part of the championship.

Regarding Jake White, the Brumbies are currently top of the super 15 rankings having been nowhere for several years prior to his arrival. He also took the springboks from the shambles of the 2003 world cup to world champions in 2007.

Schmidt inherited a heineken cup winning team which was only going to get better due to the age profile of the team. He leaves an aging team that is clearly on the wane.

Jake White said publicly he wasn't interested in the job- he was asked on twitter and replied directly "Don't hold your breath". I haven't seen anything that suggests he was ever even approached and certainly he seems completely uninterested.

DOD wrote:By the sound of his press conference this could be hilarious.

We will miss the undoubted highlights of Declan Kidneys reign- his commanding and confidence inspiring press conferences

LeinsterFan4life wrote:Schmidt did a excellent job giving youngsters loads of gametime. I don't get where this whole leaving Leinster in a hole comes from especially when you consider he was contracted for another year.

He played youngsters in some Rabo games but they never became first team players. The average age of the Leinster 1st team must be close to 30.

Notch wrote:Jake White said publicly he wasn't interested in the job- he was asked on twitter and replied directly "Don't hold your breath". I haven't seen anything that suggests he was ever even approached and certainly he seems completely uninterested.

Exactly, he wasn't approached. But he should have been.

Foreign coaches who are under contract will always say they are not interested unless there is a concrete offer on the table. Robbie Deans never applied for the Wallaby job. He was headhunted as was Gatland.

Scrumdown and his dodgey facts strike again.

Scrumdown wrote:

The form of sides such as Ireland, Wales and Australia, who have a talented but limited pool of players available to them will always fluctuate more than sides such as SA, NZ, France and England. The fact of the matter is that Kidney was without half of his front line players for the majority of the six nations and as a result Ireland struggled. They weren't more predictable than say Wales who are also accused of being predicatable when they are not winning. They just had more injuries especially in the latter part of the championship.
Regarding Jake White, the Brumbies are currently top of the super 15 rankings having been nowhere for several years prior to his arrival. He also took the springboks from the shambles of the 2003 world cup to world champions in 2007.

Schmidt inherited a heineken cup winning team which was only going to get better due to the age profile of the team. He leaves an aging team that is clearly on the wane.

Again... we watch Irish rugby a little closer than you, Scrum.... and you'll find very few people who'll agree with that reading here in Ireland. Mostly because it simply isn't true. Ireland are/have been a predictable team for perhaps three straight years now. Predictable in their consistent inconsistency.

Not a blessed thing to do with 6N injuries. 6N injuries didn't have a part to play in the disastrous sequence of warm up games pre last WC - or the rubbish during the WC (but for the Australian game which was also more passion than tactical comfort plan).

You're wrong. Many sides have become familiar with Ireland's effort. 40ish minutes of endeavour at some point in a game and then revert to monumental but stagnant periods of defence. It was a pattern...we all knew we'd see it in most games. Morgan Parra said he always knows what to expect from Ireland. Wrong in your assessment. Ireland's predictablility was not injury related but coaching related, for more years than one 6N season.

Schmidt leaves a team that needs one or two players, has a young group that have gotten more gametime than low key Pro12 games and have second highest try scoring record again this season and in the play offs and an Amlin final...and many (not just Irish people) still say they are probably still 2nd best side in Europe. Wasn't it an injury ravaged side that faced Clermont in the pool stages? So the excuse works for Ireland but not Leinster?

Oh Jake...forgot Jake. Em...forget Jake.

SecretFly wrote:

Again... we watch Irish rugby a little closer than you, Scrum.... and you'll find very few people who'll agree with that reading here in Ireland. Mostly because it simply isn't true. Ireland are/have been a predictable team for perhaps three straight years now. Predictable in their consistent inconsistency.

Not a blessed thing to do with 6N injuries. 6N injuries didn't have a part to play in the disastrous sequence of warm up games pre last WC - or the rubbish during the WC (but for the Australian game which was also more passion than tactical comfort plan).

You're wrong. Many sides have become familiar with Ireland's effort. 40ish minutes of endeavour at some point in a game and then revert to monumental but stagnant periods of defence. It was a pattern...we all knew we'd see it in most games. Morgan Parra said he always knows what to expect from Ireland. Wrong in your assessment. Ireland's predictablility was not injury related but coaching related, for more years than one 6N season.

Schmidt leaves a team that needs one or two players, has a young group that have gotten more gametime than low key Pro12 games and have second highest try scoring record again this season and in the play offs and an Amlin final...and many (not just Irish people) still say they are probably still 2nd best side in Europe. Wasn't it an injury ravaged side that faced Clermont in the pool stages? So the excuse works for Ireland but not Leinster?

Oh Jake...forgot Jake. Em...forget Jake.

It isn't one or two players that Leinster need. They need a new center partnership, a new scrum half, new tight head, second row.

Injuries will affect Leinster less than they will Ireland because of the relative strength of the
Leinster squad compared to club sides in England, Wales and Scotland.

The English, Welsh and Scottish national teams are much stronger than their club teams and therefore in order to compete, Ireland needs its first team out on the field. Mcfadden for example is a strong replacement for odriscoll at provincial level. At international level, he isn't and the standard of the team drops below the level required to win test matches.

In order to reach the amlin final, Leinster have had to beat scarlets, exeter, wasps and biarritz who are nowhere near as strong as their national teams in terms of personnel. Schmidt has effectively coached an international team in all but name to victories over club sides.