Simon Hick column: Joe Schmidt can launch Irish rugby towards new heights

After securing two medals at this year’s World Champs and seven in the last two Olympic Games, Billy Walsh is now the most successful coach this country has known.

The Irish boxing team is the equivalent of Uruguayan football or Finnish javelin throwing – a tiny population of brilliant technicians who consistently challenge the bigger nations. Walsh is far more than a head coach, however. He has changed the way Irish boxing is run and, most importantly, changed the way Irish boxing thinks about itself.

Before the success came, Walsh wasn’t afraid to think big. Its difficult to imagine success before it arrives, and even harder to convince those around you that it will come. Now that the trophies have been won, however, he hasn’t stopped imploring all around him to give more, to keep raising standards to get the structures right.

It’s rare in sport that you get a chance to think big, to extricate yourself from the local rivalry, the relegation fight, the meddling chairman.

These are anxious times in Irish rugby, but exciting times too. Joe Schmidt, a smart man with a steely resolve, is now in charge of our national team. There is a sense of a fresh dawn among the provinces too.

We have two brand new coaches in Matt O’Connor and Pat Lam, and two who are only in the job a year in Mark Anscombe and Rob Penney. There is a great opportunity for the national team, under Schmidt, to play with a distinct identity, with a flourish and an ambition.

Declan Kidney’s era delivered a Grand Slam, but by the end it felt like a regression. No one could explain with any conviction what our style of play was for those five years. Too often we played not to lose, rather than to go out and win. When Eddie O’Sullivan’s team were at their peak, there was real creativity, but the four provinces were playing four completely different styles.

Schmidt should benefit from a more uniform playing style in the provinces. ©INPHO/Dan Sheridan.

As cliched and repetitive a notion as it became, the truth was Leinster produced almost all of the back-line in that era and Munster produced the rugged forwards, with Connacht and Ulster occasionally chipping in. There will always be different interpretations on a theme, but at the moment our national coach and all four provincial coaches at least aspire to play progressive rugby, with skills at the core of everything.

Ireland is the only major country that doesn’t have its own rugby identity. We are also the only major country not to have made a World Cup semi-final. Under Joe Schmidt we have a real shot at being perceived as the world leaders in attack play, and the provinces are currently producing players who will suit that style.

The only reason Australia have two World Cups and we don’t is ambition and innovation. If we do become an exciting team to watch, it won’t take long for collective goodwill to take hold – just ask Leinster.

Pressure and stress inhibits long term planning. Successive national coaches have admitted they are under pressure to win every game, that there is no room to experiment. The IRFU need money to fund the game, the national team are the cash cow, so they have to keep winning at all costs.

With the Heineken Cup money under threat, 10-year ticket sales going badly and every player squeezing them for bigger contracts, the IRFU have never been under as much financial pressure, but the coaches have to put a distance between themselves and the balance sheet.

It’s assumed Joe Schmidt will be the same as Kidney and Eddie and Gatland – they all said their job was to prepare the Ireland team, that a national strategy was beyond their remit, but Alex Ferguson and Michael Chieka and Billy Walsh didn’t think like that.

A head coach, if he’s smart enough and ambitious enough, can become a touchstone for something bigger, something more sustainable. Joe Schmidt could be the man to get things rolling.

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