Ordinary Joe Audiobook (Free)

Presented by Penguin.

In the autumn of 2010, a little-known New Zealander called Joe Schmidt took over as head coach at Leinster. He had never experienced charge of a professional team. After Leinster lost three of their 1st four video games, a prominent Irish rugby pundit speculated that Schmidt acquired ‘dropped the dressing area’.

Nine years on, Joe Schmidt has stepped straight down as Ireland coach having achieved success on the scale nothing you’ve seen prior observed in Irish rugby. Two Heineken Mugs in three periods with about Common Joe Leinster. Three Six Nations championships in six periods with Ireland, like the Grand Slam in 2018. And a bunch of firsts: the initial Irish success in South Africa; the first Irish beat of the All Blacks, and a second; and Ireland’s 1st number 1 1 world position.

Along the way, Schmidt became a byword for precision and focus in coaching, remarkable attention to detail and the highest of standards. But who’s Joe Schmidt? In Ordinary Joe, Schmidt tells the storyplot of his existence and influences: the encounters and management ideas that produced him the coach, and the person, that he is today. And his diaries of the 2018 Grand Slam and the 2019 Rugby World Cup give a brilliantly personal insight in to the tensions and joys of training a national group in victory and defeat.

From the tiny towns in New Zealand’s North Island where he played barefoot rugby and jostled across the dining room table with seven siblings, to the training grounds and video areas where he consistently kept his teams a step prior to the opposition, Ordinary Joe reveals a typical man that has helped his teams to achieve extraordinary things.