As soon as Joe Schmidt hopped out of his taxi in Dublin on Wednesday morning with the Wallabies team manager Chris Thompson, the first three people he passed all recognised him and each simply said: “Hi Joe.” As if he’d never been away.
“It’s just a really nice feeling, like you’re kind of home, so I’ll miss that,” said Schmidt on Thursday, before noting that while his family don’t live here any more as they did in his years as Leinster and Irish coach, his son Tim and brother Jamie do, so he will always “be back and forth”.
“I’ve been looking forward to finishing for a long time and it was a phone call from a mate of mine that had me end up here [with the Wallabies] and I’ve got to say I’ve really enjoyed it. I still really enjoy the on-field coaching and the interactions with a motivated group of people.”
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This thought promoted him to recall his tough start at Leinster, when they lost three of their first four games. After the second of those defeats he was asked in the Treviso press room if this was the beginning of the end for Leinster. And a headline suggested Schmidt had ‘lost the dressingroom’.
Whereupon, Brian O’Driscoll and the other Irish frontliners returned, Leinster beat Munster at the Aviva Stadium 13-10 and the Schmidt three-year reign of two Heineken Cups, a Challenge Cup and three Celtic Leagues, was up and running.
In all, Leinster played nine games at the Aviva and won eight, their sole loss being in a pool game against is old team Clermont Auvergne. Under Schmidt, Ireland played 34 matches at the Aviva, winning 28, drawing one and losing just five. Last season he returned as head coach of the Wallabies, as he will on Saturday, in all likelihood for the 45th and last time as a head coach.
You can just never say never with Schmidt, and one sensed the 60-year-old wasn’t being entirely flippant when asked if he could envisage returning to Ireland in a coaching capacity one day.
“Maybe Terenure,” he suggested breezily, before adding with a laugh: “but Carlos [Spencer] has got that job and I’m so old I’ve coached Carlos. I won’t be doing that but I’m just hoping that I can have a bit of time in both hemispheres and share the time with kids and friends in both hemispheres.
“I haven’t got anything planned other than just trying to spend some time with my youngest son, Luke, and get out on the golf course and just breathe for a while, spend some time with family really.”
Schmidt looks forward to the day he comes back to the Aviva as a fan.
“I know this may sound bizarre but when we used to go into the stadium and you drive past the Sandymount Hotel and look at all those people having pints and really enjoying themselves and I’m feeling like I’m in this sardine can of pressure and I look out there and I think: ‘One day I’m going to get amongst those people’. And then I’m going to drift into that stadium and I’m going to enjoy watching a game where I’m not so emotionally hanging off everything that happens’.”
In any case his legacy to Irish rugby his secure. As Johnny Sexton once put it: “Joe taught us how to win”. And that legacy continues in Andy Farrell, Paul O’Connell and Sexton all having worked with him, as well as a number of the players.
And when Schmidt does return as a fan, and he gets out of a taxi in town, the first people he’ll meet will all say: ‘Hi Joe’. For he’ll always just simply be known in Ireland as Joe.
Joe at the Aviva
Leinster: Played 9, won 8, lost 1.
Ireland: Played 34, won 28, drawn 1, lost 5.
Australia: Played 1, won 0, lost 1.
Total: Played 44, won 36, drawn 1, lost 7.
