Hold your horses, Les Kiss still has stripes to earn before Wallabies handover

The Wallabies’ season is over, but there are still things that are not finished ahead of 2026.

After a disappointing end to the season, sectors of the Australian fan base have reverted to sharpening their pitchforks, calling for an earlier-than-planned change of head coach.

This predictable and short-sighted mindset ahead of the 2026 Test season shows just how passionate but desperate the rugby heartland is for a successful Wallabies side.

The discussion and clamour from the crowd concerns whether head coach Joe Schmidt should vacate now, and make way for Queensland Reds’ coach Les Kiss, three matches earlier than initially planned.

This would mean Kiss would take the reins for the three Nations Championship series matches in July instead of taking over afterwards.

While there are already many opinions floating around on the subject, one thing many people omit from their calls for Kiss to be the lead from the get-go in 2026 is Kiss’s coaching track record with the Queensland Reds.

In two successive years, Kiss has led the Reds to quarter-final berths where they have been flogged.

In 2024, it was 43-21 by the Chiefs. In 2025, it was 32-12 by the eventual champions, the Crusaders.

This year’s season was also plagued by one or another controversy; most prominent of all was that the Queensland Reds’ clear directive from above to not take shots at goal when they were on offer.

It was a strategy that seemingly cost them close games against the ACT Brumbies and Chiefs in the second half of the competition.

Specific on-field directives aside, Kiss is yet to deliver any sort of coaching masterclass with his Queenslanders.

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In 2025, which was his second season, Kiss’s men failed to kick on from their improved 2024 campaign. They were in the middle of the table for linebreaks, defenders beaten, carries, and penalties conceded.

Tellingly, the Reds were hit hard with injuries to some of their most influential players, such as Matt Faessler, Liam Wright, Josh Flook, Seru Uru, and Harry Wilson.

This would explain but not excuse their poor numbers at the breakdown. There were worrying numbers shown at the breakdown without the ball, their breakdown security with it, often losing too much pill at the ruck.

Elsewhere, their set piece struggled for large parts of the season, particularly the lineout and maul. Similarly, there was a lack of a true identity or consistency of game plan throughout the competition, which is often described as a sprint.

Early in the season, they threw a lot of offloads, which were often picked off, dropped, or ineffective. This was quickly stamped out after they were crushed by the Crusaders in round 4, where loose carries and tip-balls were a gold mine for a rampaging, counter-attacking Saders side, ending in a 43- 19 defeat.

Afterwards, offloads were limited; they began to play more direct, but their lack of depth and young roster meant they were often inconsistent between games and within games.

The side’s only two constants were a defence operating around 90 per cent completion and a vehement rejection of taking penalty goal opportunities.

Ultimately, Kiss’s year ended as a season of ‘what could have been?’ To be fair to Kiss and his staff, their absorption of some Melbourne Rebels players meant better depth but lower cohesion, and the injuries truly did not help. However, Kiss is entering the biggest coaching role in Australian rugby, and he has not yet delivered at the Super Rugby level.

This is the single greatest reason as to why Kiss should not take over the Wallabies earlier than originally planned. He must have the sole focus of displaying growth in his coaching of the Reds and pushing his men to achieve results. There can be no other distractions.

This is because even this year, some pundits wondered if Kiss was distracted at times whilst the next Wallabies coach was being selected.

Should Kiss be appointed earlier than originally planned, and Queensland underperform again in 2026, those critics would only grow louder.

Another major reason why Schmidt should see out his contract is his forward planning. Schmidt will be as disappointed as any of the players and most of the fans about the results of the back end of 2025. This is evident as he is already planning for 2026.

Schmidt has already told us he will hold a Wallabies camp in January as he begins to plan for the July Tests against Italy, Ireland, and France, the very same three teams the Wallabies just lost to at the end of their Quilter Nations series tour.

The first of these Tests comes on July 4, against Ireland. The 2026 SRP final, which Kiss, along with all the other Australian coaches, should be aiming for as well, will finish on June 20.

This will give whoever the coach is only two weeks to get the team together and implement their game plan ahead of a clash against one of the best teams in the world.

Kiss surely will want to be in that final with his Reds, but should he be the Wallabies coach as well, he’ll have his hands full with Wallabies selections, logistics, and who his coaching staff will be.

There is also an optics and expectations element to consider in all this. After these three Tests, the Wallabies go on to play Japan in back-to-back weeks in August.

Although this would also be a two-week window between the Italy Test on July 18 and one of the Japan Tests on August 8, it nonetheless gives Kiss a softer landing in the Test arena.

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This would give him a month of embedding himself in the Wallabies camp, getting to know the players more so than their patterns, which he has observed during his good friend Schmidt’s tenure.

It will give him a glimpse into who is performing in camp, during matches, and how they react to different pressures and demands, for there is no doubt that with a new coach comes fresh eyes and new selection calls.

Despite recent results, the Wallabies are in a better position in terms of depth, ability, and knowing who their best 23-man squad is.

Schmidt has got this side to believe in themselves, and they know they can devastate any side in the world when everything aligns.

Schmidt still has a role to play for the Wallabies, and Kiss still has a huge role to play for the Reds. Continuity, stability, and patience in this handover will break the more than decade-long pattern of firing coaches before their tenure.

That pattern of self-destruction culminated in the 2023 Rugby World Cup capitulation.

The Wallabies and Australian rugby are healing, so do not be so quick to call for a quick fix, for what Schmidt, the Wallabies, and eventually Kiss will be able to achieve next year, should everything be done rationally, looks to be extraordinary.