IRELAND’S TONIC FOR SCHMIDT
Ill coach given another victory to smile about
IRELAND’S tension-filled win over Australia was dramatically marred by Joe Schmidt taking ill and heading away to hospital with suspected appendicitis last night.
The New Zealander managed to struggle through what was a gripping Guinness series finale, where an early 17-point Irish lead was swiftly snuffed out by a gusty Australia before two second-half penalties from Jonathan Sexton ultimately proved decisive.
However, Schmidt was absent from the post-mortem, leaving lieutenants Les Kiss and Simon Easterby, abetted by skipper Paul O’Connell, to sift through the minutiae of what was a third victory this month, a seventh in succession and a ninth win in 10 calendar year outings for Ireland.
Not bad given the anxiety that enveloped Aviva Stadium after they had been reeled in and exited at the break deadlocked at 20-all with the Wallabies.
‘He is just going to be assessed,’ explained defence coach Kiss about the reason for Schmidt’s unfortunate absence from the post-match debrief. ‘He has had some pretty bad stomach pains during the day. He toughed out the game, in Joe quality, but he is just going to get assessed to see that he is right.’
With that reassurance for the coach’s well-being, it was left to O’Connell to outline where Ireland, now ranked third in the world, stand following their three-match Novem
ber winning streak that has put a happy full point to 2014 and leaves them poised to push on and progress even further next year.
‘We have been here before with a good autumn and it didn’t serve us well,’ he said, recalling 2006 when Australia and South Africa were similarly beaten in November only for the following year not to go to plan as Ireland, coached by Eddie O’Sullivan, didn’t win the Six Nations title and were eliminated at the pool stages of the World Cup.
‘That is probably the main lesson you learn. One of the things we have been eager to do is just to improve game by game.
‘When we come into the Six Nations there will be a short review of what we have done in the autumn and we will improve on that.
‘There won’t be a whole lot addressed in terms of what we want to achieve for the Six Nations or the World Cup. We just want to improve from these three games.
‘There is a lot of very good things but there is an awful lot of things to improve on as well. That is just the general attitude that the squad and the coaching staff have adopted and it works well for the team.’