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Elevator moment convinced Rokocoko about 'rugby scientist' Schmidt
By
Liam Heagney
Legendary All Blacks winger Joe Rokocoko has recalled the seminal elevator moment that convinced him that Joe Schmidt – Ian Foster’s new New Zealand team selector – was the real deal as a coach. Long before Smokin’ Joe blazed a trail on the Test level scene, winning 68 caps in a try-heavy international career between 2003 and 2010, he initially worked as a player under Schmidt at U18s age-grade level.
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Schmidt himself has come a long way since then, helping Clermont and Leinster to win club trophies before going on to win three Six Nations titles with Ireland, including the 2018 Grand Slam. He is now officially part of the All Blacks set-up, taking over as a selector from Grant Fox and helping formulate overall strategy and attack play as well as providing analysis on opposition teams for Foster.
It is a change that Rokocoko has welcomed, the ex-prolific All Blacks scorer explaining his rapport with Schmidt from way back. “I know Joe very well,” he told the latest edition of Midi Olympique, the French rugby newspaper.
“He was my coach with the New Zealand U18s and then with the Auckland Blues. He is a remarkable technician, very attached to the basic gestures of the rugby player. When I was young, he spent hours detailing the angles of the strikes, the degrees of orientation of these… Joe Schmidt, he is a rugby scientist.”
Asked to elaborate, Rokocoko added: “One day when I took the elevator with him when I was playing for the Blues, he used the floor numbers to detail to me the movements he wanted to work on, which areas to attack during the weekend and how to achieve it… He is incredibly smart but he demands real technical perfection from his players. Some make it, some don’t.”
Rokocoko watched the recent series defeat for the All Blacks against Ireland while on holiday in Fiji. Asked why they were beaten 1-2, he suggested: “The spiral is negative, the All Blacks remain on four defeats in the last five games…
“The body language of the players does not deceive, they are sorely lacking in confidence. Moreover, the attack game is not varied enough and faced with these increasingly better-organised defences, these movements, which worked until now, no longer work.
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“The comparison with the Irish launches was also very unfavourable to New Zealand, so maybe the change of coaches will change all that… I don’t know.”
Joe said it all in a few sentences, the most significant part being ''they (the AB's) are sorely lacking in confidence''.
Logically regaining this teams confidence is not going to happen if the All Black coaching staff cant devise innovative ways to negotiate those organised defenses Joe describes, and also expand the offensive game to fully utilise the experienced play makers available.
To my mind the challenge is not so much about the abilities of the players themselves but for the coaches, any analysis of the Ireland games reveals that the on field strategy was mostly at fault not the effort put in by the senior All Blacks to win.
If this coming Rugby Championship reveals more issues for Foster's team, the road ahead will become a rebuilding process rather than a smooth build up for the Rugby World Cup.
But anyone is better than Foster.. and it speaks to NZR desperation to keep foster in the job that he is being surrounded with better coaches than he is. And to NZR just trying to cover their a...
Schmidt is Teflon for some reason. Dude lost to Japan and got bundled out of 2 world cups by 40 point losses at the quarterfinal stage, and Ireland have improved greatly since he left, yet he's hailed as some genius