RORY BEST has expressed regret over his critical comments about Joe Schmidt’s management at the 2019 World Cup.
He feels he let Schmidt down as he was the captain and should’ve been standing up for him at a time when he was being widely criticised.
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Back in December Best had spoken about how he and the other senior players had ceded too much control over to coaches.
He used the morning of the quarter-final drubbing to New Zealand as a case in point of there being ‘too much detail and too much tension’.
That day Schmidt and his staff decided to change the usual match-day routine and have a coaches-led meeting.
But speaking yesterday at his book launch to The 42, the former captain said his words were twisted and that he never meant any disrespect to Schmidt.
FIRST CONTACT
He said: “One of the first people I contacted was Joe, I was texting him because I was away at the Anthony Joshua fight over in Saudi Arabia when it all came out so I’m trying to text him and then eventually phoned him when I got home.
“I was in Dublin in early January and I asked him to meet up and said, ‘I know the way my words were taken and I obviously said them but it’s not what I meant.’
“I felt that at a time when he was getting a bit of stick, I should have been the one to stand up and say, ‘Look what we’ve done over his tenure.’
“Instead, it was one that it looked like I put the boot in and that frustrated me.
“I was maybe trying to say that I think it’s a shared responsibility.”
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He added: “When people are looking for what happened, I was trying to give my opinion on what might have made a difference.
“That’s not to say that at the time that I disagreed with what we’d done.
“There was a wee bit of hindsight and I was disappointed with myself that I allowed it to be quoted that way in terms of the way I said the words.
“Joe was comfortably my best coach and I wouldn’t have played on until I was 37 without the confidence he had in my ability and the stock he put in what I did and what was important to him.
“At a time when he needed support, I felt that I’d done the opposite. It was never my intention.”
