IRELAND HAVE OUTFOXED ENGLAND HERE

WITH Andy Farrell taking over from Joe Schmidt after next year’s World Cup, you can only conclude that Ireland’s gain is England’s loss. Congratulations, yet again, to Ireland for their clever and intelligent handling of their coaching succession. As for England missing out on a brilliant homegrown coach, I am almost filled with despair over this. Farrell has always been an outstanding individual, a great player and a coach of massive potential. Yes he was part of the coaching team that failed to deliver at the last World Cup, but every national coach — or assistant coach as Farrell was — will at some time be associated with failure. Eddie Jones, Graham Henry, Steve Hansen, Warren Gatland, myself and many others have been there and got the T-shirt... but that didn’t make us bad coaches. In fact, that losing experience can be the making of a coach and for the last few seasons Ireland have benefited massively from the hard yards Farrell put in with England. The feedback from Farrell (right) with England was always positive, so where was the necessity to ditch him after the last World Cup? For Ireland, bringing in a completely new coach — perhaps from overseas — after a World Cup and announcing it well ahead of time would have been fraught. There can be an element of the ‘farewell party’ about proceedings and players’ attention could also wander to the future and the new regime and whether their face fits or not. But appointing Farrell from within kills that possibility stone dead. Farrell and Schmidt work incredibly closely. Farrell is totally respected by the players and backroom staff and when everybody clocks back on after the World Cup there will be continuity and unless Ireland ‘bomb’ in the World Cup, there will be huge momentum. There will be plenty of time and space to pay tribute to Schmidt and the superb job he has done with Ireland over the coming months — he still has a Six Nations and a World Cup to go — but in many ways, despite his tremendous achievements, I feel sure he will judge himself by how Ireland perform at the World Cup. I am confident Ireland will shine but the toughest and most demanding part of his reign is only just starting.