As Sam Cordingley revealed the secrets to the Queensland Reds’ revival, the general manager has cleared the runway for Les Kiss to succeed Wallabies Joe Schmidt, saying the Super Rugby franchise won’t stand in the way of his aspirations.
Kiss, 60, has long been considered one of the main candidates to succeed Schmidt, who will stand down in early October for family reasons after 22 months in the role.
With more than two decades of coaching experience, including two World Cup campaigns as an assistant with Ireland, Kiss has quickly moved towards the top of local candidates after helping elevate the performances of the Reds.
Although the Reds bowed out in the quarter-finals in his first year in charge in 2024, the 2011 Super Rugby champions quickly emerged as a contender throughout the year after a 25-year drought-breaking win in Christchurch and several close encounters against New Zealand’s best, including the Blues and Hurricanes.
That momentum has only continued in 2025, with the Reds winning four of their opening five matches, including a commanding performance over Dan McKellar’s Waratahs and Jamie Joseph’s Highlanders in Dunedin, which ended another 12-year drought.
The Queensland Reds snapped a 12-year drought against the Highlanders at Forsyth Barr Stadium on March 22, 2025. (Photo by Joe Allison/Getty Images)
The strong start to the season, which has been done with several players sidelined due to injury and suspension, has been just the momentum Kiss and the Reds have craved as they look to end their 14-year premiership drought.
But it also hasn’t hurt Kiss’ chances of succeeding Schmidt, who the Reds coach worked with for three years at the Irish national side, in a race that has gone longer than many anticipated.
Watching closely are the Reds, who naturally would have to either contend with finding a new coach, and possibly entire coaching team, or working with Rugby Australia to allow Kiss to juggle his duties in 2026, similarly to Michael Cheika in 2015 when he doubled up as Wallabies and Waratahs boss.
Cordingley, the former Wallaby and long-time Reds general manager, said the sideshow to this year’s Super Rugby season had left him with much to consider.
“If I said it hasn’t been a distraction, I’d be bullshitting a bit,” the former scrum-half told The Roar Rugby podcast.
“But, look, I’ll preface this by saying that I think Kissy would be a wonderful Wallabies coach, be that if he was to take over immediately or any time into the future.
“He’s certainly got the credentials, he’s got the wisdom and certainly I’d imagine the backing of the players, the Queensland players, I’d say.
“And I think he’d be great at the role.
“From our perspective, we’re supportive of his aspirations if, in fact, he does become the primary candidate for the role.
“Our position is that we’re just keen to get an aligned plan with Rugby Australia, because it’s obviously important that for Australian rugby to be successful, Queensland need to be successful.
“And Kissy and his coaching team are contracted through to 2026. So, it’s in everyone’s interest that there’s a coherent plan around what that next stage would be in the event that Kissy is that primary candidate.”
Les Kiss addresses the Queensland Reds. Photo: Queensland Rugby Union
As Morgan Turinui pointed out last week, should Kiss, or any of the current Australian Super Rugby coaches, be appointed to the role, it would break a from recent tradition where Wallabies coaches have typically won major silverware, including a Super Rugby title, before taking the reins of the top job.
“I think you’d be talking about a relatively tight crew of recent Australian coaches that have won Super Rugby titles,” said Cordingley.
“From Les’s perspective, as I said, he’s coached at international level, albeit in supporting roles.
“He’s a coach that has coached in environments like Ireland and England, multiple seasons, had to manage multiple personalities throughout that time. I think that’s a strong point for him.
“It also suggests his man management, from what I’ve experienced within our program, is first class.
“Wins on the board, having not won a Super Rugby title, I would say that the Reds’ progression in recent times has been a real positive for Kissy.
“I personally would like to see an Australian coach within the Wallabies. And I think that’s been spoken about by (Rugby Australia CEO) Phil (Waugh) and probably even Joe as well.
“But he’s well-credentialed in terms of his ability to shift a culture and take us to where we are at the moment, acknowledging that we’ve got a long way to go before we can start patting ourselves on the back.”
Meanwhile, Cordingley said the Reds were benefitting from the Super Rugby franchise’s decision years ago to back their youth and development pathways.
Indeed, the Reds’ playing roster has gone from an average of 21.6 to 25 since 2020.
At the same time, the Reds’ spine – Fraser McReight, Harry Wilson, Tate McDermott and Hunter Paisami – have been playing alongside one another since 2020, with several other mainstays including Liam Wright, Jock Campbell, Filipo Daugunu and locks Ryan Smith and Angus Blyth.
“We’ve got a big focus on strategy, sticking to strategy,” Cordingley said.
“That’s revolved around identifying, developing our best local players.
“A number of those guys have come through those pathways, 20s, et cetera.
“[It was] probably back to that 2018-19 period, where I think it might have been that year of the transition of a lot of the Force players that landed in Melbourne, we’d made a decision at the time to back our youth to come through.
“That coincided with a pretty difficult period around finances. Obviously, we moved into that COVID-19 period.
“We had to be quite strategic and our board at the time backed in the fact that we did have a good group, and it was going to take a period of time for these players to come through.
“They’re now starting to get pretty expensive, these lads. I think we’ve got, just on the count by the end of this season, we’re likely to have about 15 players that are 50-plus caps within the squad, 19 internationals to work into $5.5 million.”
Former Wallabies halfback Sam Cordingley says one of the keys to Queensland’s revival in Super Rugby has been backing its pathways and its group of players. (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
Although players of national interest receive top-up payments from the governing body, Cordingley said the hard part about balancing the books was keeping the top-end of players in town and doing enough to ensure the emerging talent coming through is also looked up after and blooded.
“Most of us can identify who the talent is, but being able to fit them into that cap is where the challenge comes, particularly when guys are playing regular internationals,” he said.
Cordingley said there was no “magic formula” regarding list management, but said the Reds’ focus on developing combinations on the field and stability off the field was a big part of their philosophy.
“The more games you’re playing together, the better off you’re likely to go on field,” he said.
“I think 80% of our squad have come through our pathways or our elite pathways, our academy.
“That cohesion exists around I think our staff as well, which I feel has been a real positive for the Reds.
“We’ve got a lot of long-term staff who have been in the program. As I said, we’ve got a bit of an abundance mentality around talent as well.
“A lot of great talent here in Queensland. Guys like (under-19s coach) Dale Roberson and (head of talent management) Paul Carroza do a terrific job of sort of connecting our academy to our senior program.
“We do track our Reds’ caps pretty closely, and obviously we like that to align with guys playing for the Wallabies as well.
“I can’t give too many secrets away, but we have got a pretty fantastic data scientist who’s aligned with one of our great partners, QUT, Professor Dimitri Perrin, who’s come in to lend a hand in that data space. I’ll keep that information unique to us.”
He's just too quick
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Kalani Thomas opens the scoring for the @Reds_Rugby ????#SuperRugbyPacific #HIGvRED pic.twitter.com/J0dewxSpoJ
Although the Reds couldn’t keep emerging talent Sio Kite – the 16-year-old Queensland and Australian forward, who recently signed with La Rochelle – from France, Cordingley said the Super Rugby franchise had been much more proactive in locking down its youth.
“We would look at that and say, ‘well, it would have been great to get the opportunity to talk to him in the event that we knew that French club was interested’,” Cordingley said.
“Usually in the case where a player has interest, but has a preference to stay, that player will come to the table. My understanding was that he had family over there and we wish him all the very best.
“Our opportunity now is to keep monitoring him and, in the event that he’s interested in coming back to Australian rugby, to stay connected.
“The door is never closed for those players that leave. We just like to make sure that there’s a conversation ahead of their departure.”
He added: “Ultimately, we’re not going to be able to keep them all within the system. Our job is to identify who are the very best of them, provide within succession planning and development plans, how we can actually bring those players through.
“We’ve got some outstanding kids that we’ve retained recently, Kingsley Ays and Will Ross, those type of players. We’ve got some outstanding players like Nick Conway in our system. There is a clear plan for those players.
“I’d say we probably 10 years ago, we weren’t doing it as well. One of the great things about, as I said, Thorny and Kissy more recently is the philosophy of what we term Close the Gap.
“I reckon if we look back to a decade ago, for the Reds, we’d abandoned that investment into our academy and lost that connection between our best young talent, for whatever reason it was at the time to make that decision. I think it went towards a national academy for a period. We had to reconnect that.”
Christy Doranhttps://https://ift.tt/gU6JwLG back Kiss’ Wallabies aspirations, secret to Queensland’s Super Rugby revival revealed
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