‘It was stressful’: Joe Schmidt reacts to first win as Wallabies coach

Captain Liam Wright and coach Joe Schmidt were both in good spirits as they walked into the post-match press conference room after Australia’s 25-16 win over Wales. It was a night to remember for a Wallabies group who haven’t been together that long.

Saturday night’s Test at Sydney’s Allianz Stadium has been a long time coming. The Aussies were beaten by Wales at last year’s Rugby World Cup about nine months ago in Lyon, and coach Schmidt was appointed to the role in January.

Throughout Super Rugby Pacific, fans theorised about the potential makeup of the squad and even the matchday 23. These were talking points that were debated for months but it was all leading to this one fateful July night in the Harbour City.

It wasn’t a perfect Wallabies performance but there are plenty of positives the team can take out of that one heading into another clash with Cymru in Melbourne and a Test back in Sydney against Georgia.

Taniela Tupou and Filipo Daugunu both got on the scoresheet, but it was a stunning 69^th minute try from fullback Tom Wright that will be replayed over and over for years to come. For a team that only won two of nine matches last year, this is a step in the right direction.

“A win is really important and it always is because that’s what you get judged on externally, but internally, I think just some of the moments that we did really well to earn the win, that’s what will be the focus for us building into Melbourne,” Schmidt told reporters.

“We have a few things that we’ve been working on that are maybe a little bit different to how teams have played in Super Rugby, so the adjustment time for that to become second nature is inevitably going to take time.

“Hopefully, it can take till Tuesday and we can be really good at it… it will develop over these next two weeks, hopefully, and we know how tough The Rugby Championship is.”

But other Tests are all in the future. For now, at least, the Wallabies are a winning team and that will be enough for Aussie fans to sing Schmidt’s praises after helping steer the team back towards a brighter tomorrow.

The exciting thing is the Wallabies’ playing group and Schmidt haven’t been working together for that long at all, but there was enough there on Saturday to fill fans with a sense of hope about the future for the men in gold.

There is a lot of pressure and expectation on anyone either playing or coaching at this level, and Schmidt couldn’t help but laugh when talking about the stressors of that Test.

For Schmidt, the chance to take up the head coaching position with the Wallabies is a return to something familiar. The New Zealander was named World Rugby’s Coach of the Year during a famous stint with Ireland before moving into assistant coach roles.

“No, I haven’t really missed it,” Schmidt said with a smile. “It was stressful there today… I would be pretty candid about how I just like to work with motivated people.

“Trying to manage a staff, a lot of them I only met last week so everything’s been new.

“We went through the team warmup yesterday at the captain’s run, didn’t do a great job of it, and funnily enough we didn’t do a great job of it today, either. But they’re the sort of things that take a bit of rhythm and take a bit of ironing out.”