SHANE McGRATH ON HOW SCHMIDT STILL HAS MEASURE OF RIVALS—
This was Scotland’s chance, but they couldn’t break down Schmidt’s Irish side
VULNERABLE is not quite the word, but Joe Schmidt has been strikingly revealing in giving his reaction to Ireland’s opening two games.
After the match against England he used the word ‘bullied’ unprompted.
That must have stung his team; it should have.
And when he was interviewed shortly after the final whistle in Murrayfield on Saturday, Schmidt’s relief was palpable.
Sports figures at the highest level now comes with an impenetrable sheen.
It is extremely rare to hear a player or manager speak with candour across any code. They seek, instead, to screen their real views behind dull platitudes.
But Schmidt was plain-spoken and believable at the weekend, as he was seven days before.
After the England match, he made no attempt to cosset his players with soft words. They had been battered and he said as much.
That they responded in Edinburgh evidently filled him with satisfaction but also sheer relief.
Ireland righted themselves against a team with the skill to exploit any gaping weaknesses that had been unaddressed after England’s riotous victory.
There were wobbles and there were aspects of the Irish effort that betrayed men who had been rattled in their first game of the championship.
However, they endured and the victory that resulted could have enormous value, for the immediate challenges over the next five weeks but also for the World Cup.
Imagine how Scotland coach Gregor Townsend will try to rationalise this result.
His team are ambitious and they are not reluctant to talk up their qualities and their goals.
If there was an absence of bolshiness before Ireland’s visit, there was among the Scotland players a robust confidence.
This was their time. Ireland were sore and deflated. They needed a win of any stripe to recover from the traumas inflicted by England.
With Robbie Henshaw injured, the half backs rusty, and the second row stock depleted, this was a chance too good to pass up.
Ahead of a World Cup meeting between the teams on September 22 that will effectively settle who tops Pool A, the value of such a victory would be immense. And they couldn’t manage it. Despite laying siege to the Irish line before half time, they could not break Schmidt’s team.
Finn Russell was typically flamboyant, and the back three players were straining to attack (that determination was only temporarily checked when Stuart Hogg went off injured), but they couldn’t break Ireland.
And that has repercussions for the World Cup.
Ireland can take sustenance from the knowledge that when they looked fallible and exposed, they still beat Scotland.
It was illustrative of the gap that remains between a team desperate to get to the top level of the game, and one already there.
Ireland have survived the stress of Grand Slam deciders and championship set-pieces. Scotland don’t know what it is to function under such scrutiny.
The wisdom accumulated by Rob Kearney, Keith Earls, Conor Murray, Cian Healy, Rory Best and Peter O’Mahony is Ireland’s greatest resource, and it is priceless on a day as challenging as Saturday.
One name is absent from that list, the most valuable one of all.
Johnny Sexton’s latest head injury will be of the most concern to him and his family.
If it took rugby an awfully long time to accept the gravity of this issue, it is better understood now and there is an urgency to this story that goes beyond Ireland’s World Cup concerns.
Sexton has been exasperated in the past about the attention his head injuries receive, but it is a topic central to the Irish rugby side again.
With Italy the next opposition in 13 days’ time, Schmidt will be able to rest Sexton even if he is declared medically sound to play in that match.
In the longer term, his management and treatment will remain under fierce scrutiny.
This story is too serious, and
Sexton’s history is too dense, for it to be any other way.
Joey Carbery’s successful afternoon after replacing Sexton was a triumph for Schmidt the coach, but also Schmidt the strategist.
His role in Carbery’s move from Leinster as part of IRFU efforts to spread playing talent through the four provinces, was with situations like this one in mind.
Had he been gathering cobwebs in a provincial dug-out watching Sexton play the big games, then he wouldn’t have been equipped with the confidence to influence this victory as he did.
It helps to have a team-mate as willing and cute as Keith Earls, who along with Rob Kearney brought solidity to Ireland’s back three that was important.
Ireland have corrected themselves. It isn’t the most dramatic headline, but it is an accurate one and, by the look of Schmidt after this game, a welcome one.
Scotland should be left with an inferiority complex. Ireland remain too good for them.