A combined Australian and New Zealand selection coached by Schmidt’s former Ireland assistant, current Queensland Reds boss, and inked-in Wallabies successor Les Kiss potentially provides the Lions with their stiffest challenge yet on this tour because Farrell’s Lions are still searching for a statement performance, despite showing flashes of brilliance with ball in hand in each of their four matches against the Aussie Super Rugby franchises. Schmidt has similar issues with his Wallabies, thanks to a less than inspiring narrow victory over Fiji in Newcastle, New South Wales last Sunday, his side’s first Test since last November’s Northern Hemisphere tour and a game in which they lost first-choice fly-half Noah Lolesio to a whiplash injury which required neck surgery and a lengthy period on the sidelines. On Friday he named his squad for the three-Test set, calling up 35-year-old James O’Connor to complement his still-fit playmakers Ben Donaldson and Tom Lynagh, two years on from the now Crusaders fly-half’s most recent Test cap. Yet whatever Australia’s perceived difficulties, the presence of Schmidt as head coach gives them a fighting chance. As Ireland head coach Farrell saw his side edge past the Wallabies in Dublin last November in a Test the visitors should really have won, while Schmidt’s stint as All Blacks attack coach at the 2023 World Cup saw him engineer the archetypal starter play that unlocked the Irish defence and ultimately ended Sexton’s playing career at the quarter-final stage on that climactic night at Stade de France. “Well, that’s what all good coaches do,” Sexton said this week in his role as kicking coach for the Lions. “They analyse a team and they try and make it as hard as possible. We won the game in November and we were a yard away from winning the other one as well so you can sometimes base everything on a result whereas in terms of the performance it could have been very different to analyse. “But that’s not taking away he’s a smart coach and we’ve got one as well and they’ll both come up with good plans and it’s about how the team go out and execute it.” Sexton credited his old boss at both Leinster and Ireland with rescuing the Lions series with the host nation after Schmidt picked up the pieces following Australia’s disastrous World Cup campaign in France, when a raw team under the guidance of Eddie Jones became the first Wallabies side not to progress from the pool stage. “He’s a smart guy. I’ve obviously got a great relationship with him but he’s doing a great job with Australia, I think; 18 months ago people were worried about this tour and now it’s all to play for. It’s fantastic for the series.” Sexton also, reasonably, pointed out that the New Zealander has not been involved in Irish rugby since 2019, when he handed control over to defence coach Farrell. “You’d like to think that Joe would have evolved, changed his ways and learned from that with the All Blacks, when he was in there, with the Blues. “Some of the things that he is big on haven’t changed, you can clearly see that, in terms of how they play and we don’t know exactly what they’re going to do. We’ve only seen them for one game but we know for sure that Joe likes to set things up in what he shows against Fiji will be very different from what he shows against the Lions.” That said, the presence of former Ireland assistants Farrell and Simon Easterby, the current defence coach, as well as on-field general Sexton in the Lions camp makes for a fascinating contest to come and the former fly-half, who will join Farrell’s Irish staff full-time for next season, recalled Farrell and Schmidt’s working partnership on the IRFU payroll between 2016 and 2019. “They were a great team. They got on great, they were bouncing off each other, good cop, bad cop… I’ll let you figure out which one was which… they dovetailed well. “Joe was always the bad cop and Andy was sometimes good, sometimes bad, but they were brilliant together. They knew how to push the buttons of that team in particular and you could tell they were in it together and I would say Andy learned a lot from Joe. “At the same time, Andy’s come in and evolved things and that’s always what you want. If he went and tried to imitate Joe people would see through it. He came in and he changed a lot and he’s had some good success. “I’m sure they’ll have a beer at the end of the series and they’ll have some fun during it as well.” Schmidt’s positive impact on Irish rugby in his nine years at Leinster and the national team is unquestionable and he appears to have made a similar impression in his short time in Australia, though he has already announced his intention to step down and hand over to Kiss at the end of 2026, a year out from a home World Cup for the Wallabies. As Brumbies head coach, Stephen Larkham has been impressed by the open channels of communication Schmidt has implemented between the national team and the four Super Rugby franchises which supply the bulk of the national squad, though he jokingly betrayed some frustration at the absence of the majority of his Wallabies players for his side’s own meeting with the Lions in Canberra last Wednesday. Asked by the Irish Examiner if Schmidt’s communication with the provincial bosses extended to requests for the way the Brumbies took on the Lions, Larkham quickly responded with: “Apart from eight of our players?” referring to the Wallabies he was denied from deploying against the tourists. “He's been very good, actually, sort of very conscious of the tour agreement. Obviously, that came out in the media a little bit, just in terms of letting players go back to their states. And he's trying to work with us. “He is trying to work with us, like, where are you short? What do you need? Like Tom Hooper, for example, knew that he had to have him on the bench (for Australia versus Fiji last Sunday), but tried to keep him with minimal time out there on the field so that he can actually back up and give us 80 minutes this week. “So he's got a job to do. He's got to win, and that was a close game, and I know he's just got away with it and probably a little bit rusty for them. “But he's been very accommodating to the Super Rugby franchises, and if this was a proper Test build-up for him, we wouldn't have seen any of these players at this stage of the season. “Since he's been in the Australian system, he has been outstanding for all the Australian head coaches, all the assistant coaches. Everyone's been invited up into camp as many times as you can get up in there, and he's taught us a lot.”