Ronan O’Gara Absolutely Loved His First Week Coaching With Ireland

“I was catching flies, with my mouth open, watching the maestro in action.”

Ronan O’Gara linked up with Joe Schmidt and his coaching set-up for the first time this week ahead of his role for the upcoming June series. O’Gara will work alongside Schmidt and the other coaches for the USA leg of the series.

The former Munster and Ireland playmaker will be joined by Felix Jones and Girvan Dempsey as the trio look to learn as much as possible from the master Schmidt as they look to progress in their respective coaching careers. Writing in The Irish Examiner, O’Gara is hugely impressed with Schmidt.

On Tuesday, I was catching flies, with my mouth open, watching the maestro in action. First impressions of Joe Schmidt? Impressive. His delivery is very impressive, and that is so important as a coach. The clarity of the message, the expectation and the solution. Everything is the solution and making good decisions as individuals on the pitch. It’s all very simple, too. There’s nothing there that you haven’t seen, nothing from the bottom of the deck, but it was evident from the first hour of the first session this week that it’s a well-oiled machine.

Anything that challenges you as a coach is good. It’s a fresh perspective, a new take, and another layer of my coaching education. On Monday night in Carton House, I got a notepad and wrote bullet points following the conclusion of my fourth season with Racing 92.

You can read O’Gara’s full piece in The Irish Examiner here.