Friday 25 January 2019 08:28, UK
Joe Schmidt spoke on the Will Greenwood Podcast about Jacob Stockdale's try against the All Blacks, family life, Ireland's Six Nations, and his coaching future.
Schmidt was named coach of the year at last year's World Rugby Awards dinner, having steered Ireland to a Six Nations Grand Slam in a 12-month period during which they lost just one Test out of 12.
The New Zealander will leave his post at the end of the World Cup in Japan, which means the upcoming Six Nations will be his last in charge of the second-best team in the world, and Schmidt says time has flown since he took the job in 2013.
"It's funny, it's a little bit like Groundhog Day," Schmidt told Sky Sports at the Six Nations launch on Wednesday. "We come here at the start of the year, and it doesn't feel like that long ago that I was here for my first one, nervous.
"We'd had a tough Six Nations the one before, and I was thinking, 'I'd love it if we just manage to scramble into the top three'.
"Six years later, it's hard to believe I'm still here. There's only two types of coaches: those who have been sacked, and those who are waiting for it to happen.
Click here to listen to the Will Greenwood Podcast from the Six Nations launch
"You never really take anything for granted, it's been a fantastic experience to be here that long."
One of Schmidt's greatest achievements was November's 16-9 victory over the All Blacks, the first time Ireland had beaten New Zealand on home soil.
The win came about thanks to what looked like a planned move ending in a Jacob Stockdale chip-and-chase for a try, but Schmidt says the original plan had in fact gone awry.
"It actually went wrong, because Dane Coles chased out really hard on Johnny [Sexton], so he had to play Bundee [Aki] earlier. So because Bundee played earlier, Ben Smith hadn't gone. He stepped up on the edge.
"[Smith] is world class, but he knows the threat that Rory Best is if he gets the ball on the wing, because 'Besty' was the guy on the outside of Jacob.
"Sometimes people say 'that was a great move', and you're going, 'it didn't actually work, but we'll take it!'"
Schmidt says he has always encouraged his players to think on their feet, rather than stick mindlessly to pre-planned ideas.
"We try to have a paperless environment, we don't have a playbook on the computer either. We think that the best thing is for players to live it, to know it.
"A lot of people talk about coaching knowledge - I think you can't coach knowledge and expect it to be applied under pressure. You've got to understand, you've got to feel it really.
"So, in any given week, there will be plays that we know that we've done before, and there will be things that we say, 'look at this guy here, he does this, this guy does that, this is their system - let's try to get this guy to look here to get that guy to move there, and let's try to get someone late here that they maybe don't see'. It's just doing that, really."
On the opposite end of Schmidt's achievements with Ireland is the 2015 World Cup, where his side were dumped out at the quarter-final stage by Argentina, a result he says is: "still a relatively raw scar for me. There are things that I learned and I know I have to control better, and there were things that were completely beyond my control... your skipper, your on-field leader, your personnel that you would pick - some of them you'd pick first, second, third, fourth, and fifth - are no longer available. It's one of those things that can happen."
The 53-year-old says there is no way to account for injuries ahead of time, and that the only solution is to develop the rest of the squad.
"I don't think there's any fool-proof insurance," said Schmidt. "It's not like you can get vaccinated against something and therefore that can't invade you!
"What you can do, is you can try to build the best insurance that's possible, and that is probably depth.
"People say 'are you going to build through the Six Nations to the World Cup?' - it's nothing like that, the World Cup started straight after the last World Cup.
"That's when you start saying you want to be in the top four ranked teams in the world, because if you're in the top four ranked teams in the world, it means that you can't get one of the other three that are in that same bracket.
"So you immediately start positioning yourself, or trying to position yourself. You go hard for that, and at the same time, you say, 'if we lose this guy or that guy, or this number of guys, how are we going to best protect ourselves and maintain a performance?'
"We've tried to do that as best we can. Sometimes we've been helped a bit; Conor Murray being injured for last November, some guys did really well in his absence."
The final bow for Schmidt will be the World Cup in Japan, a place Schmidt says played host to a great deal of Ireland's development while several front-line players were on the 2017 British and Irish Lions tour of New Zealand.
"We had a tour there two years ago, and it was James Ryan's debut, it was Jacob Stockdale's debut, it was a number of those guys because the Lions were away.
"It was one of the things that I thought was a great opportunity to invest in this newer generation, but also the Japanese conditions.
"We're playing Japan in Shizuoka [in the World Cup], we played them there in our first Test two years ago.
"Obviously we had 11 players or 12 players who weren't there - there were a few injuries and we had a number with the Lions - but those guys, on the back of the experiences that the younger generation had, I think they'll benefit from that, I hope they benefit from that little bit of orientation."
Schmidt has revealed he intends to take at least a 12-month break when he leaves his role as Ireland coach, with family - foremost his son, who suffers from epilepsy - the main reason behind his decision to step away from the game.
"We didn't ever want to make our family life part of my public job, but we were encouraged by Epilepsy Ireland to try to normalise a condition that our son has - on the back of having a brain tumour as a four-year-old, a five-year-old, and since then has had a number of surgeries - he has epilepsy.
"We never meant to make that public, but one of the things they said is 'if you can normalise it, if you can reduce the stigma associated with a disease that is incredibly debilitating, but not somebody's fault that they have it, we'd really appreciate it if you chipped in and did that'. So my wife told me I had to!
"I was trying to keep the private life and the public job separate. Since then, Luke [Schmidt's son] has done a great job, he's incredibly resilient. I'd have to say I'm proud of the way he bounces back, because it's tough.
"At the end of this year, he will be in most likely his last year of schooling, and I want to try to coach one [person].
"If I can help coach him through that last year and try to set him up in some way beyond school, that's a project. I can do a little bit of part-time teaching, and feed what's left of my family.
"The other three kids are older, two of them will stay in Dublin in our house. We've said, 'you can't use our room because we're going to keep that spare, because we don't intend to leave forever as far as living on one side of the world or the other'.
"It's a complicated time for us, but one I'm really looking forward to as well."
