Schmidt set for one-year extension

NEWS:LEINSTER ARE hopeful of agreeing and announcing a one-year extension to Joe Schmidt's contract before the end of this week, which would keep their popular Kiwi head coach at the province for a fourth season until the summer of 2014.

Schmidt is currently in the last of a three-year contract with Leinster after succeeding Michael Cheika for the 2010-11 season, having helped Clermont Auverge to their first bouclier de Brennus in this third season as assistant coach there to Vern Cotter.

In his first two seasons with Leinster they not only added to the 2009 Heineken Cup with back-to-back European triumphs, but did so with the most attractive brand of rugby in Europe.

In the Millennium Stadium and Twickenham deciders against Northampton and Ulster, Leinster scored 75 points to 36 and eight tries to five. Finals are not generally won like that.

Last week, Schmidt made plain his contentment at life in Dublin and with Leinster, but that his immediate future would, as expected, be decreed by family circumstances.

Although the eldest of their four children, Abby, has begun studying in Auckland University, their second eldest, Timmy, is in the penultimate year of his Leaving Cert cycle at Terenure College and is a replacement scrumhalf on the Leinster Schools Under-18 side which plays their Munster counterparts today.

The likelihood must be that, with family circumstances in mind, Schmidt and his family will return to their native New Zealand at the end of next season, 2013-14, but there will be relief amongst the playing squad (despite the infamous Monday reviews), the Leinster hierarchy and the province’s supporters, that Schmidt will at least spend a fourth year with them.

For if Cheika was a tough act to follow, Schmidt is liable to be tougher still.

Schmidt will welcome back some of his frontliners this Saturday for a tricky assignment away to an ever-improving Treviso, and it’s remarkable to think that it was a defeat in the corresponding fixture two years ago which prompted calls for his head.

Leinster are resigned to losing their highly-regarded strength and conditioning coach Jason Cowman to the Irish set-up before the November internationals, although they will at least be able to retain his services for another month or so.

Cowman had always been the outstanding candidate to succeed Phil Morrow, whose departure to Saracens and a more settled, domesticated lifestyle for his young family after the 2011 World Cup, had left a gaping void for much of the last year.

The same was true of the vacancy within the IRFU’s structures for a Head of Fitness which the union only filled toward the end of last season with the appointment of South African Dave Clark, who finally succeeded Dr Liam Hennessy.

Educated at Clonkeen College and with a degree in Sports Science, Cowman worked with Leinster as a fitness adviser around the turn of the millennium before leaving to complete a Masters in Exercise Physiology at Florida State University. He returned to work with the IRFU Academy and under-21 sides and then to Leinster, where he has been strength and conditioning coach since 2007.

He had been filling much of the void created by Morrow’s departure since the turn of the year, helping out during the Six Nations and travelling on the summer tour to New Zealand, and his decision to work under Clark with the national team will be welcomed by Declan Kidney.