Thanks Joe

[backrower8]

The children playing the man not the ball again.

I said Joe was the best we’ve ever had. I also summarized his achievements, win ratio, climb up the rankings to the top.

This thread is not Joe’s personal in-box. We don’t need to blow smoke up his hole or post eulogies to him. He doesn’t need our endorsements. Write him a letter, care of the IRFU, if you are that sincere and concerned for his feelings.

My remarks are rooted in the structure and culture of the leadership of the national team and how Nucifora/IRFU needs to adapt and learn.

But then, the grown ups know that already.

Keep them coming lads. I will continue to put my views forward.

[olaf the fat]

Joe has been fantastic for Irish Rugby.

Very, very few coaches bow out at the top of the curve. Our rugby structures work well for us, our players are looked after, and many have long careers. This leads to peaks and troughs in the performance of the national team, unfortunately it has yet to correspond with a RWC.

But, beating NZ twice, winning in SA, series win in AUS, ranked No.1 in the world, Grand Slam, 6Ns titles - Jeez Joe, thats some haul!

[Oldschool]

The children playing the man not the ball again.

I said Joe was the best we’ve ever had. I also summarized his achievements, win ratio, climb up the rankings to the top.

This thread is not Joe’s personal in-box. We don’t need to blow smoke up his hole or post eulogies to him. He doesn’t need our endorsements. Write him a letter, care of the IRFU, if you are that sincere and concerned for his feelings.

My remarks are rooted in the structure and culture of the leadership of the national team and how Nucifora/IRFU needs to adapt and learn.

But then, the grown ups know that already.

Keep them coming lads. I will continue to put my views forward.

In fairness this is the "Gud on yer" Joe thread.
Your assessment of Joe's stewardship is welcome but maybe better posted in another thread like the 2020 and onwards.
To move forward, it is necessary to look backward and review first and I don't think anyone would disagree but just not on this thread which is sadly getting few enough posts as it.
Would a please help?

[Oldschoolsocks]

thanks Joe - absolutely class act. By far the most successful coach Ireland ever had, tough act to follow.

[tomthefan]

Joe's been marvellous for Irish rugby, plus he's not that old.
Maybe we'll see him return one day in some capacity at either provincial
or national level?
Meanwhile, the king is dead. Long live the King!

[Fan with smartphone]

Just want to add my thanks to this. It’s been a brilliant run. I was convinced we would get a rise for the last few games of the World Cup and am still shocked that we didn’t. Joe has been superb, across the board, right from when he first arrived with Leinster. Every intervention he made was clever. And he was hard and fair. Even when you might disagree with something, you could always see a sense to what he was at - and he generally called things right. How many times has he made pundits look silly over the years? He rarely hasn’t.

The end was so disappointing. We never got out of the traps against New Zealand. Its a random and weird thing to think of, but my mind kept wandering to that Keanu Reeves American football movie where he talks about quicksand. Maybe that’s a silly comparison, but god above, a fair few of our players looked to be feeling like old footsteps falco and it had never really happened before. We were not ourselves at all and it did just all look too heavy. This quarter final thing is stuck in the psyche. People use it as a stick to beat the players with and it’s a big deal for the players themselves too. Everybody is fixated on it. When it started to go wrong...you had 2 men hurt and stepping in and out getting treatment, landing back on with the big head bandages... it reminded me of Tyrone and Meath in an all-Ireland semi final which was an equally Vietnam-like trauma for the fellas with the war wounds. Pain is temporary and chicks dig scars, but the emotional scars can last a right while from the like of that. That’s about as wooly and superficial an analysis as you can get there and there’s nothing remotely tactical in it. But that’s because it felt like there was nothing tactical in the game. We were gone without even getting a chance to get as far as that.

That’s a real pity. The narrative is building that it was foolish to ever believe it could be done. That the 4 years in between world cups were a fool’s gold. I don’t buy that at all. Joe has had us ready to take these teams, and particularly this team, on. We knew we were squeezing the last drop out of a few players, but on balance you’d have to have thought that was the correct thing to do. It’s a bit like after Willie Anderson advanced on the haka. Because New Zealand met the challenge and beat them well, a narrative built up that it was a bad idea to advance on the haka. Don’t be meeting trouble halfway lads. Just stay safe where you are at and you might catch them on a bad day. Well f%~k that. We advanced on the haka a bit when Darcy and O’Driscoll and O’Connell nearly had their day against them. You might even say we’d started the advance in Christchurch in 2012. After that one we got smashed back hard for having the temerity to do it. We advanced a bit further in Chicago. We got smashed hard again 2 weeks later, but it was different. When we advanced again in Dublin last year, we were now uncomfortably close. The all blacks are brilliant, and were good at the weekend, but we just did not perform to anywhere near where we can. That’s hard to stomach and hardly a deserved way for Joe to finish, but that’s just tough sh!t and we will have to take it on the chin and learn from it, as they have done with their own defeats. The only way forward is to keep advancing. Keep having the temerity and keep challenging them head on and keep dusting yourself down if you need to for the next one. If I had my way I’d advance the haka literally and figuratively every time. It gets harder to do it without Joe though, I’ll say that.

My favourite moments of him coaching here...the interview after the grand slam win in Twickenham. That was just an incredible insight and a perfect day all round. My other one would be the day he made an emerging Jack McGrath scrummage on the tighthead side in a narrow defeat to the Ospreys. He could’ve moved to uncontested scrums, but declined. That marked Joe out to me as one to watch, and that he was interested in the bigger picture. He described himself as a blow-in, but this man is an Irish citizen and sadly for him that makes him as Irish as begrudgery. It’d be great to see him coaching here in some capacity again, but wherever he turns up in the future - adh mór. His time here has been a credit.

[Oldschool]

@Fan
Your post and your reference to some great memories of Joe.
I remember watching Joe's first interview (I didn't know who he was BTW) when his appointment as Leinster's coach was being announced.
Don't ask me why because I couldn't explain it but I had a really strong feeling that we had just signed the real deal.
Joe will always be the real deal.

[Twist]

Great post, even though it does reference Meath - the worst county of them all!

You're right about 2012. We very nearly had them that day (thanks Nige) and I'm certain it gave the players a degree of belief they carried into 2013, which in turn fuelled the eventual wins.

You're right too when you say that the achievements between World Cups weren't fools gold. I'm so sick of hearing that from non-rugby writers and twitter gobshites alike. "The World Cup is what matters". Yeah, well by that logic the Dutch must be useless at soccer so. Rinus Michels must have been a bluffer. Oh I know he won a few European Cups at club level with his teams playing 'total football', and took the national team farther than they'd ever been. But he didn't do it when it mattered, did he? Johann Cryuff, Ruud Krol, Jonny Rep - all a bunch of losers right? No World Cup medals in the van Basten or Bergkamp houses either, and nothing else counts apparently.

Joe's era at Leinster and Ireland has been the most successful era of any Irish team in any international code that I can think of. You'd have to be monumentally stupid to buy the idea that England, France, NZ etc aren't really trying outside of a two-month period every four years. Joe beat them all fair & square, usually in their own houses in front of their own fans.

I just hope he enjoys a nice long retirement in Dublin now, and doesn't feel any particular pressure to go an manage any teams that we might come up against. Please.

[hope not expectation]

Joe brought rugby in this country to a different level. The amount of time he spent with clubs especially underage grades was fantastic.
He deserves a happy retirement.
Thanks for the the memories

[Oldschool]

Joe will be on the Late Late tomorrow night.
Be interesting to hear what his plans for the future are?

[TrapperChamonix]

Joe will only get thanks and admiration from me.

My personal favorite game that highlighted his qualities as a coach was the away pool win v's ASM in 2010. The perceived wisdom at the time was we'd be lucky to hang on in the match and then try and nick it in the last 15 mins if we were close. Instead we took the game hard to ASM and we were fully deserved winners. I particularly remember how well Eoin O'Malley and Fergus McFadden played. They were 2 inexperienced players who others perceived as weaknesses but who delivered outstanding performances. It had all the hall marks of an outstanding coach.

[OTT]

Joe will only get thanks and admiration from me.

My personal favorite game that highlighted his qualities as a coach was the away pool win v's ASM in 2010. The perceived wisdom at the time was we'd be lucky to hang on in the match and then try and nick it in the last 15 mins if we were close. Instead we took the game hard to ASM and we were fully deserved winners. I particularly remember how well Eoin O'Malley and Fergus McFadden played. They were 2 inexperienced players who others perceived as weaknesses but who delivered outstanding performances. It had all the hall marks of an outstanding coach.

I agree with all that except we actually lost that match but the bp for us and the one they didn't get but were highly expected to (from the experts) won us the group.

[Oldschool]

Joe will only get thanks and admiration from me.

My personal favorite game that highlighted his qualities as a coach was the away pool win v's ASM in 2010. The perceived wisdom at the time was we'd be lucky to hang on in the match and then try and nick it in the last 15 mins if we were close. Instead we took the game hard to ASM and we were fully deserved winners. I particularly remember how well Eoin O'Malley and Fergus McFadden played. They were 2 inexperienced players who others perceived as weaknesses but who delivered outstanding performances. It had all the hall marks of an outstanding coach.

Was that the one that he left his down to go around behind our goal when ASM were putting us under the cosh.

[Leon Yespmed]

That was the 2012 semi final in Bordeaux as far as I remember

[Oldschool]

So Joe was offered two jobs, one rugby related.
Bet you're all wondering what the other job was.
Hint, he's a teacher.
Now what kind of school would want an ex international rugby coach of high renown as their English teacher.
The list is short, the location is Dublin.
Joe has sons that go to school in Dublin.
Hhhmmmmm!

[Oldschoolsocks]

Didn’t a certain south Dublin City school deliberately deprioritise their schools rugby in the 90s because LC results were going south

[Ruckedtobits]

Didn’t a certain south Dublin City school deliberately deprioritise their schools rugby in the 90s because LC results were going south

Not quite, but close. The local sources will suggest you get out a map of where the school is located and count the number of major GAA clubs within 5k of the school gates. (The answer is six). The reduced priority towards rugby was a function of trying to attract the sons of the members of all those GAA clubs combined with the cultural background of one of the senior Staff members running the school.

[Oldschoolsocks]

Didn’t a certain south Dublin City school deliberately deprioritise their schools rugby in the 90s because LC results were going south

Not quite, but close. The local sources will suggest you get out a map of where the school is located and count the number of major GAA clubs within 5k of the school gates. (The answer is six). The reduced priority towards rugby was a function of trying to attract the sons of the members of all those GAA clubs combined with the cultural background of one of the senior Staff members running the school.

So did LC results in the following years or not?

[Twist]

So Joe was offered two jobs, one rugby related.
Bet you're all wondering what the other job was.
Hint, he's a teacher.
Now what kind of school would want an ex international rugby coach of high renown as their English teacher.
The list is short, the location is Dublin.
Joe has sons that go to school in Dublin.
Hhhmmmmm!

You'd pity the poor f%~king rugby coach in that school!

[sunshiner1]

Not sure where to put it so putting it here. Apparently the IRFU are talking to Rassie Erasmus and Joe Schmidt to come back in a position probably to take over from Nucifora.