‘It’s very frustrating, there wasn’t too much between the teams’
of the question they asked. That’s how fine the margins are. The Wallabies missed out on one as well, so maybe its swings and roundabouts.
‘It’s difficult to contain players when they can clearly see a hand on the ball and they lose it forward and don’t get the try they are looking for. It’s very frustrating for them (Irish players). I understand their frustrations, but I also admire the way the Wallabies managed to do it.’
The Ireland coach also highlighted Australian tactics off the ball and their style of scrummaging, which he felt merited closer examination by officials.
‘It was a pretty close affair and I thought we dealt okay, but one of the frustrating things, is they often took out our support player, so then we were a bit slow at the ruck, and then the whole thing gets slowed down,’ said Schmidt
‘A couple of times, we were five meters out and got called for knock-ons that looked like pretty clear infringements on replay when we were looking at them.
‘At scrum time we didn’t quite get what we were looking for so we’re going to have to work away on that.
‘Particularly with them angling across putting a lot of pressure on our tighthead side. So we’re going to have to combat that. It’s frustrating when the scrum spins through 90 degrees, almost 180 degrees, but if it’s not solved elsewhere (by the referees) we’ve got to solve it ourselves.’
However, Schmidt had plenty of praise for the Wallabies.
‘I thought they were incredibly physical,’ said Schmidt. ‘They persisted with a pretty effective tactic of cross-kicking and having Israel Folau going after them. He didn’t get them all but he got a few which allowed them to get in behind us and we were scrambling a little bit.
‘We probably didn’t hold onto the ball as well as we would have liked,’ the head coach added.
‘Pocock put a lot of pressure on and he always makes a big difference to a team. Apart from that, I don’t think there was too much between the teams.’