Retired Ireland midfielder Gordon D\u2019Arcy has revealed the training ground warning from Joe Schmidt that has always stayed with him.<\/p>\n
The ex-Leinster centre, who won three Champions Cups with the Irish province, also explained why he became a fan of Felipe Contepomi\u2019s brutal honesty before the trophies started coming their way.<\/p>\n
With Harlequins beaten in Dublin in Round One<\/a> of this season\u2019s Investec Champions Cup<\/a>, D\u2019Arcy had delved into his past life as a player in his latest Irish Times column<\/a> ahead of Friday night\u2019s match away to Leicester.<\/p>\n The object of D\u2019Arcy\u2019s latest piece on the direction of European rugby was to highlight how French teams like Toulouse<\/a> and Bordeaux-Begles are leading the conversation as regards producing structured play laced with imagination.<\/p>\n Moment of clarity<\/p>\n He argued that while players such as Matthieu Jalibert, Thomas Ramos and Ange Capuozzo are all wonderful talents, it\u2019s the collective understanding within their respective teams that frees up their play.<\/p>\n Before getting this point across, D\u2019Arcy cast his mind back to the time when current Australia boss Schmidt took charge at Leinster in 2010 and quickly developed a stickler reputation that demanded his players took care of the smaller details.<\/p>\n Schmidt felt he couldn\u2019t trust players on the pitch who were lackadaisical about how they went about their lives off the pitch \u2013 a mindset he revealed in no uncertain terms one day to the Leinster training group.<\/p>\n It was a moment of clarity that D\u2019Arcy has never forgotten all these years later. \u201cMichael Cheika<\/a> had rewired Leinster\u2019s mentality. Joe Schmidt<\/a> focused on the style and substance of how we went about winning, a subtle shift at first but unmistakable.<\/p>\n \u201cHe embedded the phrase \u2018attention to detail\u2019 into the Irish rugby psyche and he did it without ever needing to raise his voice. Everything began and ended with winning the small moments, technical and the tactical: the passing, the running lines, the decision-making under fatigue and the clear-eyed option-taking, whether on phase four or 14\u2026<\/p>\n Ben Youngs: Leinster\u2019s \u2018pretty mega\u2019 moment and the \u2018intriguing\u2019 Investec Champions Cup game that will tell if Glasgow \u2018are genuinely in the mix\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cOn the field, he changed very little at first. Off the field was where the subtle priming started. Punctuality was non-negotiable. Being late wasn\u2019t an inconvenience; it was a breach of trust. Traffic wasn\u2019t an excuse. You simply hadn\u2019t left early enough.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything within your control became part of the culture. Did you bring the correct gear? Did you clean up after yourself? Was your body composition where it needed to be? All those small habits, the ones easy to ignore, became a currency of conduct and attitude.<\/p>\n \u201cOne day, after repeated infringements, a player finally asked Joe why he was so relentless about the basics. His response was simple: if he couldn\u2019t trust players to make the small, easy decisions every day, how could he trust them to make the big ones when it really mattered? That line has stayed with me ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n Investec Champions Cup round two: Predictions, teams, kick-off times, how to watch and referee appointments<\/a><\/p>\n D\u2019Arcy thrived in this relentless culture. \u201cWhen he announced out of nowhere that he wanted us to become the best passing team in Europe, none of us blinked. He committed to memory every catch, every pass and every transfer under pressure. Good passages were celebrated. Work-ons were delivered without sugar coating.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd slowly, almost without realising it, our standards in passing became a badge of honour. We weren\u2019t just a good passing side, we were\u00a0the passing side \u2013 or at least we believed we were. It fed the culture and made the place a brilliant, if occasionally stressful, environment in which to play.\u201d<\/p>\n Before Schmidt arrived in Ireland, Contepomi, the current Argentina boss, was a pillar of the Leinster squad that Cheika moulded from also-rans into European champions in 2009. D\u2019Arcy went on to salute his no-nonsense approach to becoming successful.<\/p>\n