Positive choices with Joe Schmidt

Niall Annett (0:01)

Hello, and welcome to Wind Yer Neck In, and I am your host, Niall Annett. We wrap up our three-episode sponsorship, InStyle, with Van Velden Smith, or VVS for short. Once again, last week, we were able to give away a free designer VVS belt, and this week, we will do so again. So keep an eye on social media for the giveaway post.

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Hello and welcome to Wind Yer Neck In. I'm at a pleasure and a privilege for me to welcome the man who guided Leinster for three years when they won multiple European Cups and a Pro 12 to go along with it, only to jump into the Irish Rugby hot seat for six years afterwards, where he helped them win three Six Nations and a Grand Slam. It's my pleasure to welcome World Rugby Coach of the Year for 2018 season, Joe Schmidt. Joe, thank you so much for jumping on today. We really appreciate your time.

Joe Schmidt (1:29)

No problem, Niall. I've had a little bit of time in recent months, unfortunately, like a lot of people, but I have started making more and more use of it, I've got to say.

Niall Annett (1:40)

Yeah, absolutely. And I think we were just talking off there that Dublin's starting to get moving again, the whole of Ireland's starting to get moving again, but how do you reflect quickly on that quarantine, self-isolation time?

And now that it's starting to get moving, I'd imagine you're getting pretty busy.

Joe Schmidt (1:54)

Yeah, I think it was a great time for me, to be honest, because part of why I finished with rugby was to spend more time with the family. And yet, during the last few months, I was supposed to be in Hong Kong, Dubai, Lisbon. I'm supposed to be in Stockholm this week. I was supposed to be in Madrid two weeks ago with a classic All Blacks game against Spain, all set up that sold 45,000 tickets. Big game in Madrid.

So, while I was disappointed to miss some of those things, I've really enjoyed the opportunity to be at home and spend time with family and reconnect because it hasn't been something I've had the chance to do on a long-term basis for quite some time.

Niall Annett (2:37)

Yeah, absolutely. I think the sacrifices that you make as a coach are something I'm looking forward to delving into later. And I suppose we'll just get into it. And we discussed it earlier, and we're gonna be quite specific about some of the areas that we discussed. And the first one off the back of the previous guest that we've had in this kind of elite level coaches is this theme of school teaching transitioning into coaching. And it's something that I'm from a family of teachers. So it's quite interesting for me. But I was wondering if you could delve into your experiences of how that enabled you to become a better coach maybe, or allowed you to have a head start on some of the principles of coaching.

Joe Schmidt (3:15)

I think one of the things, there's a lot of Kiwis who obviously, there's Stuart Lancaster, Eddie Jones, they're not Kiwis, but they're good examples of teachers who've gone into coaching really successfully.

But for myself, there was guys like Graham Henry, Dave Rennie, Warren Gatland, Pat Lam, all teachers, Tom Coventry, who was at London Irish there. So I guess for us, one of the things is that, when I first went into teaching, if you were playing first class rugby, as all of us were at that time, because a lot of those guys I played with, Pat and Gats, and against them as well, is that you could get a full salary while having time off to play the game. Because they wanted young men going into teaching. It was kind of a, I suppose a bonus for us that we could get out and we could still play rugby, still get our salary even for the days off that we had while we were teaching because it was a dispensation for any first class sport in New Zealand. So that was part of the attraction, I guess, but really teaching is about being prepared, having a progression, and communication. And I think coaching is very, very similar. I think Dave Rennie said at one stage teaching, coaching, coaching, it's the same thing, just bigger people.