Series 9 Episode 2 - Joe Schmidt (Winning)

Russell Earnshaw (0:01)

Welcome to The Pod, everyone. Shout out to SGS.

John Fletcher (0:05)

Hey Rusty, why are we partnering with SGS?

Russell Earnshaw (0:09)

Some good people there, pretty excited about their sports coaching courses and sports courses. Keen to make them industry ready, so when people leave, they're able to go and transfer into any kind of industries, coaching, teaching, being an analyst, business, whatever it might be. So I think, yeah, I think it's pretty exciting times really.

John Fletcher (0:29)

So what's so special about their degree courses that others wouldn't be doing?

Russell Earnshaw (0:33)

I think it'll be lots of real good partnerships, opportunities for people to get in a different context and learn and practise. It'll feel very applied. People will be stretched and supported and will leave ready and just go and thrive in the big old world out there.

SPEAKER_3 (0:51)

SGS College is the home of Bristol's Higher Education Sports Programmes. The programmes are designed to develop unique, innovative and creative sports practicioners ready for industry. Do you want to be a coach or teacher of the future?

Start your journey here at SGS College and become more than just a graduate. Visit sgscol.ac.uk to apply now.

Russell Earnshaw (1:16)

Great to have you on the podcast, Joe Schmidt. How are you, mate? You well?

Joe Schmidt (1:22)

Yeah, not too bad, Rusty.

Russell Earnshaw (1:25)

And I've really enjoyed the last kind of 10 minutes with you because you have a ridiculous memory for everything. Like, behind you, I think you took me through almost the whole game of playing with those dressing and who played and what time they came on and when they scored. So I'm really excited to kind of pick your brain because there's clearly a lot in it.

And I guess, well, let's start with, look, welcome to the pod, but also like, what's kind of got you to this point? We've kind of met a couple of times with, well, rugby stuff and you're kind of chairing that and you're like DOR of rugby in the universe now. What got you to that point from a coaching and playing or anything point of view?

Joe Schmidt (2:11)

Yeah, I guess I had almost 20 years of professional coaching.

I had a few family priorities that meant that I was keen to step away from coaching.

And I was probably also, I think coaching takes a huge amount of energy. And I was starting to, I felt like I was starting to run out of energy. I needed a bit of a break because I had gone from one job overlapping into the next job, overlapping into the next job along the way. And so I've never actually had a break away from it. So the world rugby job kind of came up. I could work from home because of the technology that we now have. We all kind of die by Zoom or Teams or whatever platform you're using. So it worked perfectly because it meant I could be around about the place to try to help around some of the family support that I was trying to prioritize.

Russell Earnshaw (3:20)

Well, I certainly didn't notice on the World Rugby Breakdown Group that you ran out of energy because I've never seen you put together so many clips and so many emails.

And I guess it's, and maybe it's another trait of some of the best coaches, is that they are perfectionists and they've got a little bit of the O of OCD. So I've definitely noticed that, you know, like when you do something, you go pretty seriously into it.

Joe Schmidt (3:49)

I cop criticise criticism at home as well, Rusty. I want to be a CDO because being OCD, I can't even have the letters out of order.

I don't think that I'm that extreme, but I suppose I'm always trying to see if what I can deliver is as good as it can be, and I'm trying to help other people do the same thing. And so what I have found is that when you're in a high-performance environment, people really want to reach, and they want to get as good a stretch as they can. And if they're stretching, you know, it's hard work.

Honestly, when I was coaching Leinster in Ireland, when for those 10 years, I would drive in to the training kind of campus, or drive into our training venue in Ireland. And I would take a deep breath and feel massive pressure because people had an expectation that I was always going to be really well organized, and I was going to drive a set of behaviors that they expected. And so I always felt under pressure myself because you kind of create this expectation, and it's great to have that expectation because people try to deliver on it. But that expectation also means that you judged on what that looks like, and sometimes it looked pretty hard to aspire to.