TIME TO TEST SQUAD DEPTH
Lack of cover cost Ireland at 2015 World Cup Young players need experience ahead of Japan
IT’S still the defining image of England 2015, the picture that captured the pained expressions of injured trio Paul O’Connell, Johnny Sexton and Peter O’Mahony, along with suspended Sean O’Brien, abjectly looking on from the Millennium Stadium stands as Ireland’s chances of reaching a first World Cup semi-final went to pot on the pitch against Argentina.
Even looking at the snap now, it sends a shiver down the spine. Misery wasn’t supposed to be Ireland’s lot that year. Joe Schmidt headed to those finals with supposedly the country’s best prepared team of all time.
However, a house of cards caved in when it most mattered, the gigantic toll suffered the previous weekend in beating France to top the pool decimating the backbone of the first-choice team and exposing the vulnerability of the back-up options.
Experience thrives at World Cup finals, with the trophy-winning New Zealand squad at that 2015 tournament having the most combined caps — 1,484 — out of any of the 20 teams. Ireland, who travelled with a squad containing 1,024 caps (460 less than the All Blacks), simply didn’t have enough seasoned alternatives to see them through the crisis of losing O’Connell (108 caps after the France game), O’Mahony (35 caps), O’Brien (41 caps) and Sexton (56 caps) in one fell swoop, a disaster then exacerbated by the early loss against Argentina of Tommy Bowe (who was winning his 66th cap).
Ireland’s promoted reserves collectively had 184 caps less than the talisman quintet they replaced and this massive shortfall in streetwise nous proved costly, Schmidt despondently ruing in the aftermath: ‘It became that much tougher when we lost a lot of the guys who actually dictate what we do around the pitch… if you picked out five guys you couldn’t have picked out five much worse ones from a leadership and experience perspective.’
Within months of this latest chastening quarter-final elimination, David Nucifora, who took up his IRFU high performance role in 2014, noted: ‘A lack of experience and the absence of our key leaders on the day did have an effect. It made me look back at the 2011 [World Cup] and what happened leading into that.
‘It [the IRFU’s report] said: “To truly produce a crop of world class players, it’s vital to ensure there are no obstacles in the performance pathway to stop the development of talent in all positions. The current discussion about the numbers of foreign players in provincial teams is a crucial issue in this respect. Maximising the exposure of up-and-coming players is vital”. ‘Those key points come out of the 2011 report and I’m writing something in 2015 that has actually still got some issues we’re still trying to address. We don’t want to be sitting here in 2019 talking about the 2015 and 2011 report… if we keep doing what we have always done, we’re [only] going to keep getting quarter-finals.’ In fairness to Schmidt, he only had two years in charge leading into the 2015 tournament, inheriting quite a bit of Declan Kidney’s squad even though he gave caps to 17 new players during that 27game, initial two-season period. However, with the provinces bringing through a slew of new talent, Schmidt is now finessing Ireland’s depth to try and ensure they are much better prepared to cope with all eventualities next time round. Two years out from the Japan finals that will define his legacy as Ireland boss, Schmidt has capped 28 new players in the past 20 matches and there is the prospect of another four rookies making debuts in this month’s November series where his 38-stong squad contains just 14 survivors from the 31 chosen for England 2015. Admittedly, 11 of his 28 fresh faces are still only one-cappers, but the turnover is a sign that Schmidt, who prefers consistency in his selections, is willing to explore multiple avenues in a concerted effort to develop reliable in-depth options across the board. He isn’t pulling punches either on hot topics such as the controversial project player rule that sees a foreigner become Ireland eligible through 36month residency, with fellow Kiwi Bundee Aki set to become the latest beneficiary. The coach has stressed he hasn’t blackguarded the integrity of his squad, as just seven of the 89 players used in his entire 47match reign are projects (7.8 percent). But another perspective is that six of those projects are among the 45 new caps on his watch, meaning foreigners have made up 13.3 percent of his rookie batch.
Enough of that heated debate, though. If back-to-back champions New Zealand remain the benchmark, Schmidt’s current squad is statistically measuring up to what Steven Hansen is up to with his touring All Blacks this month.
Ireland have a more experienced and slightly older squad than the champions for the series against South Africa, Fiji and Argentina, the coach identifying this November as a window where his team can still be competitive while growing some younger players at a time when centrally contracted veterans Jamie Heaslip and Jared Payne
are out of the loop injured.
Progress needs to happen. Analysis of Schmidt’s 38 highlights how loosehead, featuring battle-hardened trio Jack McGrath, Cian Healy and Dave Kilcoyne, is the only position where the extravagance of riches Nucifora alluded to for the 2019 finals genuinely exits.
Everywhere else, there is significant shortfall between the experience of first-choice and back-up players that must be remedied in the next 22 months or what happened in Cardiff could potentially materialise in Japan.
Look at hooker, for example, where 35-year-old skipper Rory Best, out of contract next June, is on deck with Rob Herring (27, one cap) and James Tracy (26, 4 caps).
It’s an obvious disparity that continues throughout all the other positions, the optimistic hope being that those minus caps can become fast learners, stay in contention in 2018 and start closing the gap on their established positional rivals.
You can’t get experience unless you play, but the rub is that Ireland also need good results as the team moves along, hence the delicate balancing act Schmidt is grappling with.