Joe Schmidt is back in Irish rugby, less than two weeks after his final match in charge of the Wallabies. Ulster has confirmed the New Zealander in a newly created consultancy role as coach development advisor, ending a seven year absence from the country where he built the most decorated stretch of his career.
The province announced the appointment on Wednesday. It is not a coaching job in the way most New Zealanders would understand one. Schmidt will not be picking a team or running a matchday plan. Instead he has been asked to work on the people who do, across the whole of Ulster rugby, from the schools and clubs through the age grade programmes and academy and up into the professional side.
The arrangement runs for twelve months and involves several visits to the province, with remote work filling the gaps. Ulster describe it as mentorship, guidance and strategic support intended to strengthen coaching capability throughout the pathway. In plainer terms, Ulster has hired one of the most respected technical coaches in the game to teach its coaches how to coach.
Schmidt has already started. “We’ve had initial discussions about where to get started, and I’ve already had the opportunity to work with some of the school coaches, alongside Dan Soper,” he said in the announcement. Soper, a long serving Ulster assistant, has moved into a transition and development role of his own.
On why the job appealed, Schmidt said, “Ulster has a proud rugby tradition and further developing the coaching pathway in the region is something that we believe can add value.”
The man who will work most closely with him knows exactly what he is getting. Ulster head coach Richie Murphy was an assistant under Schmidt during the Ireland years. “We’re delighted to have someone of Joe’s calibre involved with Ulster Rugby,” Murphy said. “His experience will be hugely beneficial in the development of coaches throughout the entire pathway.”
Ulster need it. The province finished ninth in the United Rugby Championship last season, outside the playoff places and a long way from the side that once made European finals a habit. A province that produces a steady stream of schoolboy talent has struggled to convert it, and the appointment reads as an attempt to fix the supply line rather than patch the first team.
For a New Zealand audience, the more interesting question is what this says about Schmidt himself. He turns 61 in September. He was born in Kawakawa in Northland, trained as a school teacher, and went to Ireland in the 1990s to play club rugby in the lower grades, which is not the CV of a man who was ever obviously destined to end up as one of the most influential coaches of his generation.
What followed was remarkable. He took over at Leinster in 2010 and reached six finals in three years, winning four of them, including back to back European titles. He was appointed Ireland head coach in 2013 and stayed until the 2019 World Cup, winning three Six Nations championships along the way and the 2018 Grand Slam. That same Ireland side beat the All Blacks in Chicago in 2016, the first time Ireland had ever done it, and then beat them again in Dublin two years later. He was named World Rugby coach of the year in 2018.
Then he came home, more or less. Schmidt joined the All Blacks coaching group and was part of the staff that took the side to the 2023 World Cup final in Paris, a match New Zealand lost by a point to South Africa with fourteen men. His fingerprints were on the attacking shape that got them there.
The Australian chapter was harder. Schmidt took the Wallabies job in 2024 with the side at a low ebb after the 2023 World Cup pool stage exit, and won 12 of his 31 tests in charge. He inherited a squad short of depth and a system short of confidence, and while there were genuine highlights, including a competitive showing against the British and Irish Lions, the results never turned decisively. His final match was a 57-10 win over a depleted Italy on 18 July, which at least ended a six match losing run and sent him out on a victory.
Les Kiss, another former Ireland man and a former Ulster head coach, takes over the Wallabies and starts with a home and away series against Japan in August, with the 2027 World Cup on Australian soil looming as the real assignment.
Schmidt’s decision to step back from a head coaching role was never really about results. He has spoken publicly over the years about his son Luke, who lives with a severe form of epilepsy, and family has shaped several of his career decisions, including his original move away from the Ireland job. A consultancy that involves periodic visits rather than a permanent relocation and a weekly matchday cycle fits a man deliberately reducing the load without leaving the game.
It is also, quietly, a good outcome for rugby generally. Coaching knowledge at the very top of the sport tends to stay locked inside a handful of professional environments. Putting a coach with Schmidt’s record in front of school and club coaches, rather than only elite professionals, is the sort of thing unions talk about constantly and rarely fund properly.
Whether it leads anywhere longer term is an open question. Ulster have not hidden that this is a twelve month arrangement, and Schmidt has not indicated any interest in returning to a full time role. For now, a Northland teacher who went to Ireland to play a bit of club rugby thirty odd years ago has gone back to help the next lot work out how to do it.
You can read Ulster’s announcement here, along with coverage from RTΓ, The Irish Times and The 42.
What do you make of Schmidt taking a development role rather than another head coaching job, and should New Zealand Rugby be doing more of this with its own former coaches? Let us know in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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