Joe Schmidt's inside knowledge of Irish rugby won’t count for much when Ireland face New Zealand on Saturday, according to Mick Kearney.
Ireland's 36-14 victory over Scotland set the sides up for a World Cup quarter-final clash in Paris on Saturday (8pm).
The New Zealander took over at Leinster in 2010 and was made head coach of the national side in 2013. He led the team to the Six Nations title in his first campaign in 2014 and retained the championship the following year.
In 2016, Ireland earned their first-ever win over New Zealand, a 40-29 win in Chicago, and a third-ever Grand Slam came two years later.
He stepped down from the role following the disappointing World Cup campaign in 2019. Ireland lost to Japan in the pool stage before bowing out after a 46-14 loss to the All Blacks in the quarter-final.
After a break from rugby, Schmidt (above) took up a role with World Rugby as director of rugby and high performance but made a return to coaching with the Blues and was first named selector with the All Blacks in late 2021 before becoming attack coach prior to the summer series against Ireland.
He was, in fact, in charge of the team for the opening Test when Ian Foster and two assistants, John Plumtree and Scott McLeod, tested positive for Covid-19, a game which New Zealand won 42-19.
"It certainly adds another dimension to it," said team manager Kearney of the involvement of his good friend, who turned 58 last month.
"I’ve maintained a close relationship with Joe over the years. While we haven’t been texting over the last few days, I’m looking forward to catching up with him.
"He was an amazing coach for Ireland for the years that he was involved. He brought Ireland to a new level when he jumped over in 2013 and had some magnificent success, including a couple of wins against the All Blacks, in Chicago and Dublin [in 2018].
"There's a lot of talk about Joe knowing players inside out but to me all teams know each other so well that I don’t necessarily think it’s a great advantage.
"We know New Zealand particularly well having played them three times in the Test series last July."
Current head coach Andy Farrell came on board as the defence guru under Schmidt in 2016 and took over when the Kiwi stepped down.
Many of the players have spoken about the different atmosphere in camp under the new boss.
"People have different ways of coaching, of managing people and of managing organisations," said Kearney, who was team manager between 2012 and 2016 and reappointed last summer.
"Declan Kidney [head coach before Schmidt] had one way of doing it, Joe Schmidt had another way and Andy has a different way.
"One of the key differences is that it’s probably a more relaxed environment under Andy than it was under Joe.
"That’s not to say that the environment under Joe was in any way poor.
"Andy has introduced a lot of softer skills in terms of getting the families involved, a lot of down-time for players and staff – they're not always on and maybe that has come about because of the change from Carton House [hotel and training base in Kildare] to the HPC [high performance centre] in Dublin, where you don’t feel like you’re working all day long from early morning to late in the evening.
"That has certainly helped as well, but ultimately environments are all about players and environments are created by players as much as by management.
"It’s one in, all in and they’re an extremely happy bunch, that comes with winning but they’ve huge respect for each other and get on extremely well. They’re the tightest group I’ve been involved in or seen, there’s great friendships among all 33.
"They’re well able to enjoy the fun, their down-time. It's not hugely different, but it is different to under Joe when we were based at Carton House 24/7, you felt you were at work all the time.
"It has been a nice change-up, so the environment around has changed a little bit as well.
"And there’s been a massive involvement with the families, not only in France but from the moment Andy took over.
"At the moment, the families are arriving in Saturday morning of the game, had lunch and met up with the players and enjoyed a few hours with them... that again has been a huge help to the environment in terms of you can’t be on all the time.
"Having wives, kids and partners around has helped the players relax and switch off.
"We look upon the families as part of the squad as well and that takes a lot of the stress out of it for players, they’re not concerned about how their wives or partners are going to get to the hotel, get tickets, etc.
"It’s part of the mix that has made this a really enjoyable, [a] great place to be."
Kearney was also keen to point out that Schmidt laid a lot of the foundations before Farrell took over.
"I think a lot, to be honest with you," he said when asked about how much of the bedrock was still there from the Schmidt era.
"If you remember back initially when he took over we didn’t have [forwards coach] Paul O’Connell at that stage. Paul came in and Paul was probably one of Joe’s biggest fans and, I think as a coach, learned a huge amount from Joe.
"I think he’s put into practice a lot of the habits that Joe instilled into the team and even uses some of the language that Joe used as well so I think that there has been a lot of what Joe did in his period of time that we still use.
"But obviously with Andy as head coach and Mike Catt as attack/backs coach, there has been a fair bit of tweaking as well. We play a very different game to what we played under Joe, much more I suppose ball-in-hand focused and 15-man focused.
"But just to go back to the question, certainly Paul has honestly brought a lot of what Joe brought to the team and no doubt that we benefit from that still."
Listen to live commentary of Ireland v New Zealand on Saturday on RTÉ Radio 1, or follow a live blog on RTÉ.ie and the RTÉ News app.
