It was a 38-minute first that left everyone scrambling for the rule book but the Wallabies have revealed how their plan for the chaotic lightning delay paid off during their third Test win over the British & Irish Lions.
Players were forced off the field early in the second half after lightning struck within the area, one of several games affected during a wild day of sport in NSW.
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Under World Rugby policy, players must remain off the field for at least 30 minutes without any further activity before returning for a brief warm-up to resume play.
Eventually, play would resume and the Wallabies raced away with the victory, defeating the Lions 22-12.
Ever the master strategist, Schmidt and the Wallabies raced into action at the delay, having foreseen a potential halt in action during their preparation.
Players rotated through stations, breaking down film with assistant coaches while staying mobile.
In comparison, Finn Russell was spotted on their phone, while other players were relaxing on bean bag chairs.
“We had been warned that there might be lightning, so we had a little bit of a plan, and with that plan, we wanted to make sure that players kept moving, so we had different guys rotating onto the bikes,” Schmidt explained.
“We had a couple of bikes so they were doing that. We had four balls in the changing room that we'd just thrown around just so they could stay connected and the rest of the time it was really just trying to get us organised for the restart of the game.”
When the ten-minute countdown began for play to resume, the Wallabies were straight onto the field as the Lions opted to stay in the sheds five minutes later before heading back to the pitch.
The contrasting approaches delivered for the Wallabies as Taniela Tupou made a break from the resulting penalty kick for touch, with the time off allowing Tupou and Will Skelton to push their stint into the hour mark.
“It wasn't really a change in what our strategy was but we probably did play them another five minutes longer than they otherwise would have played, but not a massive amount more,” Schmidt notes.
Ten minutes after the break, Max Jorgensen raced away for the try, giving Australia the lead they would hold on until the end.
“It was the first time I've ever had that, but Joe spoke to us before and said it could happen so we had a little plan in place for that, which helped it there,” captain Harry Wilson said.
“I think a few boys' bodies got pretty tired in that little break, so we're happy to come out after that and play pretty well.”
Lions coach Andy Farrell was quick to dismiss the idea they took the break too easy.
"That's completely utter rubbish. Utter rubbish," he said.
"You don't know until you know, and when you do know, then you have to agree that the warmup time allocated is going to be acceptable to both teams.
"We agreed on 10 minutes for the warmup, and through our advice from our experts in that field, we only made the call to come out five minutes before and stay there so that we'd be ready to go."
