LONG READ Joe Schmidt bows out on a high - but can the Wallabies escape 'the twilight zone'?

Twilight is the time when day meets night and the light blends with the dark. Earth’s atmosphere disperses scattered shards of sunshine, and the world exists in a state of partial illumination. That is where the Wallabies are right now, living in the twilight zone. There is some light, but not enough to create a new dawn.

The definition of ‘success’ depends on the start point of the venture. When Eddie Jones was installed as head coach of England after a disastrous home World Cup in 2015, paradoxically he inherited a squad primed to succeed. The Red Rose promptly embarked upon an 18-match unbeaten run, and that became the foundation stone for the best win record in English coaching history.

When Joe Schmidt took over from the same man as Wallaby supremo at the end of the 2023 World Cup, he found the state of the game in Australia in a shambles. After the final whistle blew on his tenure with an emphatic 57-10 win over Italy, he recalled the day of his appointment.

“It was a total clean-out after the World Cup,” Schmidt said. “There were two other members of staff, so we had no coaches.

“We had no real support staff and a lot of the players, even post World Cup, either weren’t available or there had been some guys who’d been left out and were teetering on the edge of heading overseas.

“I knew no-one. So, it was about convincing them we can still get together and be competitive.”

On one hand, anything would have qualified as a success after the 11-game Jones-mentored, Hamish McLennan-inspired debacle leading up to the 2023 World Cup. Schmidt’s start point was rock bottom and the only way was up. On the other, restoring the good name of the proud two-time winners of the Webb Ellis Cup demanded a minimum 50% win ratio, and that proved a bridge too far.

Taking World Cup cycles as a guideline, the head coach at the 2015 and 2019 World Cups came in at over 50% while reaching the knockout stages on both occasions, including one appearance in the final in 2015. The record of the two coaches for the next four-year cycle fell to 37% with the Wallabies dropping out at the pool stage. Schmidt’s win ratio of just under 39% represents a slight overall improvement, but it has fallen short of restoring Australia’s credibility as a contender for major international honours.

Comments after Schmidt’s farewell match against an understrength Azzurri side carried with them the bittersweet irony of a double-edged sword. Skipper Harry Wilson and star recruit from league, Joseph-Aukuso Sua’ali’i testified in remarkably similar terms to Schmidt’s coaching of the basics.

“What he’s left for us, the fundamentals of the game, it’s something that will never, ever leave us as players,” said Sua’ali’i.

“The fundamentals he’s taught us has really just made rugby a lot simpler for us,” the captain said.

If coaches at the pinnacle of the game are remembered for their teaching of the fundamentals to elite players, it means there is something awry at the level below, in the coaching at Australia’s Super Rugby Pacific franchises.

That is where the true weakness of Australia’s inverted professional rugby pyramid lies, broader at the top and narrowing towards the bottom. As Schmidt himself observed: “I do think we need to keep growing the strength in depth.

“We lacked a bit of belief in the second halves in those two games [against Ireland and France, because] there hadn’t been much success in Super Rugby.

“I think we’ve got to prove [to be] really competitive there, and not have four Kiwi teams playing off in semi-finals.”

The house will take time to rebuild, and it is why even the best parts of the Wallaby game coached by Schmidt were not class-leading. In the first three rounds of the Nations Championship, Australia were one of three top-tier nations, along with Scotland and New Zealand, striving to win matches with the possession game on attack. They set anywhere between 120 and 140 rucks per game while achieving an above-average speed of delivery of just under three seconds.

Australia are not only behind the All Blacks, they are no longer on par with Scotland in their ability to play keep-ball, wear out the opposition and score efficiently from a snowball of ruck-building. That part of the game is Schmidt’s forte as a coach and it has been an essential strand of Aussie DNA all the way back to Rod Macqueen in the late nineties and early noughties.

The negatives of the Schmidt era orbited around the themes of stubbornness in selection and uncertainty in the high office at number 10. There has been no desire to move Sua’ali’i from centre to the back three, where he would probably be bestplaced in attack and defence. One of the great strengths of the ex-Sydney Rooster’s game – an extraordinary leaping ability encased in a 6ft 5ins – has gone to waste as a consequence, while residual uncertainty around contact and in defence remains.

Will Skelton is one of the best forwards in the world and he changed the course of the series when he started against the British and Irish Lions in last year’s second Test. Skelton was also available for the first Test but left out for Jeremy Williams.

Without Skelton, the Irish-based Lions pack thrived. With him, the physical balance shifted in favour of the green-and-gold. Well as Josh Canham and Williams performed in the Nations Championship, some of the same prejudice against high impact-based forwards lingered in the non-selection of Queensland’s Lukhan Salakaia-Loto.

Under Schmidt there has also been little sign of the long-standing merry-go-round at number 10, which pre-dated his arrival, being resolved. The Kiwi mastermind started seven different players in the pivotal role in his 31 Tests – Noah Lolesio, Ben Donaldson, Tom Lynagh, James O’Connor, Tane Edmed, Carter Gordon and Declan Meredith – with another two utility players [Hamish Stewart and Jock Campbell] covering the spot off the pine. Cater Gordon may well be ‘the man’ in future, but time is running very short indeed to prove the point before the 2027 World Cup begins.

Schmidt chose, in the words of the immortal Johnny Mercer, to ‘accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, and latch on to the affirmative’ in his leaving address.

“We actually showed that we could do some things [against Italy].

“So that’s part of why I’m encouraged and that’s part of why I’ve loved the challenge because when people say we couldn’t, like especially the Lions we were [being] so written off, I was really proud of the way the players came together and competed.

“After 25 years of doing this professionally, I know that results are not the only visible demonstration of progress.

“You can’t sell out stadia [five successive sell-outs in 2026] if people aren’t getting some sort of belief about what potentially the team can deliver.

“We’ve stabilised things, albeit with a big help from the Lions [tour revenue], from the financial perspective. We’ve got people coming back.

“There are increases in young kids playing the game. The schools are very competitive. We were competitive at our age grade as well – two big wins in recent years over the Kiwis.

“There’s lots of positive signs and sometimes those seeds take a while to grow, but there is a fair bit to be excited about.”

The best bits of Schmidt’s tenure were in evidence against an Italian side shorn of its Six Nations stars, with seven cast-iron starters including scrum anchor Simone Ferrari, ruck-buster Manuel Zuliani, electric back-three man Ange Capuozzo and Herculean centre Tommaso Menoncello all missing.

The first half-hour alone provided ample illustration of how efficient Schmidt’s teams can be at quick and decisive entries to the opposing red zone, and unexpectedly inventive at exits from their own end. The Wallabies scored 31 points from five early red zone entries.

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— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) July 21, 2026

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— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) July 21, 2026

In the opening sequence of the game, the Wallabies kept the ball for four minutes and used all of the Nations Championship law changes to their great advantage: first winning a penalty under the stricter defensive protocols at the breakdown; then driving a lineout where Italian defenders have to regroup behind the ball after swimming up the side. Two easy penalties and the Wallabies find themselves encamped on the Italy 5m line, with a score duly arriving. More tinkering with the laws will be necessary to make the maul a true contest, as opposed to an endless succession of spin-offs and rolls upfield, in a form of legalised obstruction.

The other area where Schmidt’s teams tend to be exceptionally well-drilled is on restart return exits, where the Ireland side he coached [2013-2019] and the Wallaby outfit he has just left have struck an excellent balance between contestable kicks and wide runbacks with ball in hand.

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— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) July 21, 2026

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— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) July 21, 2026

In the first instance, nine Ryan Lonergan is looking for Tom Wright to wave his wand with a flourish as midfield playmaker, in the second he launches a pinpoint high kick to be reclaimed by wing Harry Potter. In both clips, Australia are already looking to make the second kick after the break is made, with Wright moving up to attempt one of his patented 50-22s from first receiver, and Lonergan forcing a goal-line dropout which finished in the fifth green-and-gold try of the half. Another three minutes spent with the ball firmly in Wallaby hands, another score at the end of it.

Schmidt accomplished many good things as coach of Australia, but ultimately a tailor can only work with the material he is given. Until the professional pyramid underneath the national side becomes stable and successful at Super Rugby level, and the grassroots in locations as far afield as Western Sydney and Victoria are truly connected to them, the Wallabies will continue to live and play in the half-light. A twilight zone of what they once were in the past, and could yet be in future.