AFTER A COMPREHENSIVE win over Wales last weekend, Joe Schmidt is set to name a heavily-changed XV for the second World Cup warm-up Test against Scotland.
Vern Cotter’s men visit Dublin on Saturday for a 17.00 kick-off, and the Kiwi head coach has decided to leave a number of his bigger names out of the 25-man matchday squad to play Ireland.
After trialling a number of new combinations, albeit in an experienced team overall, Schmidt is now likely to make wholesale changes before facing Scotland as he looks to get game time for many of the other players in his squad.
“There will be quite a few changes,” said Ireland skills coach Richie Murphy at Carton House this afternoon.
The guys at the weekend did reasonably well. It’s another opportunity to get more guys onto the pitch over these first two games, so I think you would expect quite a few changes and some guys who haven’t had game time will be coming back in.”
Murphy confirmed that captain Paul O’Connell is “fit and available this week” but wouldn’t be drawn on whether or not the Toulon-bound lock will be part of the starting XV on Saturday.
With Luke Fitzgerald and Marty Moore fully fit again, they may well feature in the team too. It would seem obvious that Schmidt had planned which players he wanted to use in which games during this summer Test window, but Murphy explained that the process is a little more fluid than that.
“You can’t really do that,” said Murphy of rigidly planning the XVs. “We’ve obviously gone into it with teams in mind, but those teams have changed from week one to week two and they’ll probably change in week three and week four as well.
“It’s a difficult process to do that, but players are fresh, players are looking to get back in and play. If we feel they’re in the right position, we’ll put them back in. If we feel they’re not quite ready for that, we’ll hold them back. It’s just a matter of managing individuals really.”
The fact that the likes of Keith Earls, Felix Jones, Jordi Murphy, Donnacha Ryan, Richardt Strauss and Darren Cave all impressed against Wales – having not been seen as first-choice players – might have been uncomfortable for the regular front-liners.
In that regard, Murphy reported that there is an eagerness among a large portion of the players not involved last weekend to get onto the pitch.
“I think there’s some guys that you look at who are definitely chomping at the bit to get in there, and there’s other guys that are happy with where they’re at and happy to be moving in the right direction to be ready to come back in when they’re needed,” said Murphy.
“At this stage, the lads have been through a pretty tough six weeks, coming into our seventh, so I think most guys are in a position where they’re ready to come in and play.”
After five tries in the win over Wales, Schmidt will look for an even more clinical display against the Scots on Saturday evening. Ever the perfectionists, Ireland weren’t totally content with their showing in Cardiff.
“We were pretty good,” said Murphy, “but when you look back through the video we see loads of areas that we weren’t good enough in, loads of things we need to improve on this week and keep building over the next couple of weeks.”
