JOE LOOKS TO FUTURE
Youth given its head as Schmidt rolls dice against familiar foes
JOE SCHMIDT has been as good as his word this month. At an awards function on Halloween night, the Ireland coach promised: ‘You will see a few changes through the three Test matches.’
Few, though, believed his current thirst for experimentation would continue the whole way through to the very finish.
Having anxiously watched an overhauled selection struggle to victory last Saturday against Fiji, the general expectation was that Ireland would revert to the team that got the series off to a flyer with a comprehensive victory over South Africa 13 days ago.
Not so. Robbie Henshaw’s closelyguarded hamstring problem meant an injury-enforced change was required when Schmidt showed his hand yesterday, with Chris Farrell kept on deck instead of being cast aside after a single run as it was thought would happen.
But no-one foresaw that the coach would continue to roll the dice elsewhere, handing Adam Byrne a surprise debut on the right wing and giving James Ryan, who he described as being ‘just a kid really’, an unexpected first start at lock. It’s quite the gamble.
In the last while we’ve heard Schmidt regularly reference the 2015 World Cup elimination to Argentina. That had created the impression that his Ireland would be locked and loaded, that he would be selecting as strong a side as possible in an all-out effort to get a result back at the Pumas.
However, after the refreshing period of discovery when shaking up his squad for the summer tour to America and Japan, Schmidt, knowing Six Nations 2018 is definitely no place for experimentation, has, to his credit, decided to take a further chance in exploring the unknown.
No one would have batted an eyelid if he had chosen the longestablished Devin Toner at second row or given another run to fast upand-coming Andrew Conway, who had been making light out wide of the recent axing of Simon Zebo.
But Schmidt has bravely put the result in the hopper, hoping that an unpredicted selection with a light engine room and a rookie threequarters line can still survive what is likely to be a stern examination.
Not that his memories of that 2015 defeat have suddenly disappeared. Shortly after announcing his side, he asked: ‘If we are looking two years backwards, how do we go forwards? There is a real danger in looking too far back.’
He had a point, in that Saturday’s starting XV contains just five Irish starters from 25 months ago, compared to seven for Argentina. But later came the clear evidence that World Cup exit is still at the very forefront of his thoughts, despite his risky selections of Byrne and Ryan.
Just listen to his level of detail in recalling that first quarter-final try. ‘If you look at those early collisions, you only have to look at a couple of minutes in when we have actually got a little bit of an overlap and Iain Henderson gets turned over by [Agustín] Creevy on the ground. Guys like Pablo Matera were immense in winning collisions and in the lead-up to their first try he breaks a tackle after [Joaquín] Tuculet takes a high ball. They spin it wide, but the damage is done on the way to getting it wide.’
His throwback Thursday didn’t end there either, his session concluding with a run through some of the star names marked absent on that October Sunday. ‘World class is world class and there just aren’t that many of them around… I don’t think there is any team in the world that aren’t a little bit vulnerable without their very top players.
‘So when you lose a talisman like Paul O’Connell, lose Sean O’Brien bristling away and not prepared to lose collisions, lose your GPS in Johnny [Sexton], and that’s not even counting Pete [O’Mahony] and Jared Payne, those colliding variables can make anyone vulnerable on the day.’
That vulnerability wasn’t selfinflicted, though, injuries and suspensions the only reasons for that rejig, unlike tomorrow when he has a three-quarter line sharing just five caps between four players.
‘A good day in the office has to be some good performances from some individuals given an opportunity; that they deliver the sort of performance conducive to the team doing well.
‘If we can do that we are going to be really competitive. You can never say you will get a result or you want to get a result.
‘The players will be rolling their sleeves up and working really hard to get the result, but the way you do that is through individuals picking up their performance and combining it well enough that we are hard to break down defensively and we threaten them across the pitch on attack.’
Unlike what happened in Cardiff. INPHO