‘Never been so unprepared’: Schmidt flags Wallabies experimentation in July Tests

Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt has flagged using multiple captains and experimenting with different selections during his first three Tests in July, after admitting he has never felt “so unprepared” during his time as a successful Test rugby coach.

Speaking ahead of the Wallabies’ first Test against Wales in Sydney on July 6, Schmidt conceded he was feeling the nerves after completing a four-day training camp with his new squad in Brisbane, and with just one more week’s training remaining before putting his first Wallabies team on the field at Allianz Stadium.

Schmidt, who took Ireland to world No.1 between 2013 and 2019 and was part of the coaching staff that helped the All Blacks play in the 2023 Rugby World Cup final, was appointed in January. But he has had to wait six months to name a squad, and then get to know the players and bed down a style in a two-week training period.

“I’ve never been so unprepared, to be fair,” Schmidt said on Thursday.

“This is the one time I’ve got to meet all these players. In those previous roles, I’d had three years with Leinster and I knew a greater proportion of that [Ireland] squad. Before the All Blacks, I had the Blues, and so yeah, it’s a little bit daunting, to be honest.

“But if I wasn’t nervous, I don’t think I’d be on the edge doing my job right. So I’m happy to be nervous because it just encourages me to work a bit harder and engage a bit quicker.”

Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt oversees training in Brisbane.

Schmidt said he did not yet have a team in mind to take on Wales, nor a captain. He will pick a skipper after selecting the first Test team next week, but flagged the prospect of the captain changing as he also changed the team in two Tests against the Welsh, and one against Georgia.

“Probably there’ll be a little bit of movement in the side. I’m pretty sure that we’ll use more than just 15 of the same starters, so there could be a different captain for one or two of the Tests,” Schmidt said.

“And that will also allow us to just experiment a little bit. But you can’t experiment too much when you’ve got a team like Wales coming.”

Though he named 13 uncapped players in his 38-man squad, Schmidt said he would lean on players with Test experience in the first instance. Given the short preparation before the Wales opener, he will also consider existing combinations from Super Rugby sides, but unlike his strategy of drawing heavily on Leinster to populate the Irish side, Schmidt said he didn’t plan to do the same with the Brumbies.

Joe Schmidt gives some direction at Wallabies training in Brisbane this week.

“There’s been certainly nothing intentional about drawing heavily on one particular group of players who play a certain way because … I know that there are things that we’ll do differently from the Brumbies,” Schmidt said. “The comfort I had with Leinster, is that I’d actually just come out of coaching there. So a lot of the continuity of expectation was there.”

Schmidt won’t look to cut-and-paste the Irish playing style onto the Wallabies, either. Ireland relied heavily on strong defence and a risk-averse attritional attack, but he said he would look to formulate a game style more suited to Australian players.

“Even in the broader selection, I think there’s a few different ways you can play. We’ve got some different size blokes, who are able to play the way that they best play,” he said.

“We’d obviously like to be able to play with some tempo, and I don’t think that that will surprise anyone.

“Everything’s a hybrid, it tends to be. The last two years with the All Blacks, it was different again [to Ireland] because you just want to try to get the best out of your individual players, and some sort of collective game model that they’re all invigorated by, but also plays to their strengths as best they can.

“I’m still learning what those strengths are, so I’m not going to say that we’ve arrived at a way to play that’s going to be successful because that’s going to take one more week, hopefully. Then we can put something together next Saturday.”

After thumping the Wallabies and making the Rugby World Cup finals, Wales have lost all six Tests played in 2024. They fell to Italy in a winless Six Nations campaign, and went down to the Springboks at the weekend.

But Schmidt said the scoreboard didn’t tell the tale of a Warren Gatland side that is “tough” and “combative” and was competitive in each of their defeats.