Joe Schmidt’s odds for Wallabies role shorten after RA appoint close ally

Rugby Australia (RA) have taken their first significant step to hiring the next Wallabies head coach by appointing their new head of high performance.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, they are set to bring in Peter Horne with the deal close to being finalised.

Providing everything goes smoothly with the latter stages of the negotiations, it will be announced over the next week.

After a dreadful year, RA are looking to put people in place who can take the organisation forward and Horne will play a key role in that.

His competition

He saw off competition from Harlequins director of rugby Billy Millard and ex-Wallabies captain James Horwill to take the position.

Horne has been working with World Rugby since 2015, firstly as general manager of high performance before becoming director of high performance in 2021.

Irish Rugby Football Union performance director David Nucifora was also linked but he wasn’t interested in taking it on.

Nucifora will leave the IRFU in 2024 and return to Australia and, according to the Herald, could come on board in some sort of consultancy capacity.

Next head coach

One of Horne’s new roles will be to help with the appointment of Eddie Jones’ successor as head coach.

He is reportedly close to Joe Schmidt following their time together at World Rugby, which means the New Zealander could become a leading candidate for the role.

Equally, Schmidt worked alongside Nucifora for five years at Ireland and that will add further credence to the links if the ex-Brumbies coach joins Rugby Australia as a consultant.

Schmidt coached the Irishmen between 2014 and 2019, helping them to win three Six Nations titles and one Grand Slam.

Although they ultimately fell at the quarter-final stage in two Rugby World Cups, the 58-year-old helped improve the fortunes of the country.

They defeated the All Blacks for the first time ever during his tenure and then repeated that feat in the 2018 end-of-year series.

Following his departure as Ireland head coach, he joined World Rugby before becoming an All Blacks selector in 2022. He was then appointed to the role of New Zealand attack coach, a position he held until the end of the 2023 World Cup.

Former captain’s thoughts

Stephen Moore was asked about his view on the next head coach and the former Wallabies captain believes that it should come from abroad.

That does not mean ruling out Australians, with Leicester Tigers’ Dan McKellar also in Moore’s thinking, but that it would be a mistake to appoint from within the country.

“We just need to have the best coach and it’s no secret we haven’t been great at developing our own coaches,” the ex-hooker told AAP.

“So you need to look outside; it’d be wise to cast a wide net and pick the absolute best possible.

“If that’s Joe Schmidt that’s great, if that’s Ronan O’Gara that’s great and if it’s Dan McKellar that’s great too.

“We need to go through that process and we didn’t do that with Eddie and it probably came back to bite us.”