It feels like the reputation of Joe Schmidt has experienced somewhat of a resurgence in this country in light of Ireland's loss to New Zealand at the Rugby World Cup.
The Kiwi experienced a huge amount of success during his time as head coach of Ireland, leading the team to three Six Nations triumphs. In saying that, his time in charge is probably now viewed less fondly than it once was.
Much of that is down to the style of play that the team has adopted since his departure. Whereas the side is a free-flowing one under Andy Farrell, Schmidt preferred a more methodical approach that did not quite capture the imagine in the same manner. As well as that, the team's performance at the 2019 Rugby World Cup meant that he exited on a sour note.
However, his role in helping the All Blacks beat Ireland in Paris was a timely reminder of his qualities as a coach. His kind actions after the game also went down very well.
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Nigel Owens recalls annoying Joe Schmidt habit in dealing with referees
Joe Schmidt was incredibly thorough during his time as Ireland head coach, planning every single detail as precisely as possible. As it turns out, that did slightly annoy some people outside the camp.
Writing in Wales Online, Nigel Owens gave Schmidt as an example of how not to deal with referees if you are a test level head coach.
There needs to be an open and transparent process of how a coach and a referee interacts.
There's no point in coaches complaining about 50 decisions in a game and sending clips of everything they think the referee got wrong.
Joe Schmidt was someone who would send pages and pages sometimes, as would Richard Cockerill if Leicester lost and Gregor Townsend the same if he wasn't happy with my refereeing of Glasgow when he was a coach there.
As referees, we would just completely switch off and think there is no point at all in replying. After all, if someone thinks we got 50 things wrong, then there’s no way we’re going to have a constructive conversation around it.
The best coaches would send you at most a handful of things. Warren Gatland did that and Steve Hansen, when he was with New Zealand, is another good example. He would send you six or seven things and he would probably be correct on two or three of them - they would be decisions that I had got wrong or at least had not been consistent with throughout the game.
You can see why a move such as that one would annoy referees, something that can work against you when relationships with officials is such an important part of test level rugby.
In saying that, there is every chance that Joe Schmidt would not have experienced the success that he did were it not for this meticulous approach.
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