THE FALLOUT FROM the All Blacks clash has, rather understandably, lingered long into this week, but Ireland are keen to move on.
While the outside world has debated incidents of perceived foul play and looked at the various reasons Joe Schmidt’s men came up short in the second Test against the Kiwis, Ireland have regathered themselves and turned towards the Wallabies.
2016 has not been a vintage year for Michael Chieka’s Australia squad, but wins over Wales, Scotland and France in the last three weekends have brought some badly-needed confidence back into the group.
They are the third-best team in the world, according to the same World Rugby rankings that have Ireland fourth.
So while the emotional and physical intensity of playing the All Blacks has surely taken a huge toll on Ireland in recent weeks, Schmidt and his staff have been stressing the need to finish out what has been a good month overall so far.
I think it’s exciting in the sense that Australia come here with a bit of a bounce, they’ve been disappointed in their Rugby Championship results,” said Ireland assistant coach Simon Easterby.
“They’ve come over here, they haven’t changed too much, but they’re playing a brand of rugby which suits their skillset, and that makes them a dangerous team.
“They came pretty close to getting ahead against New Zealand at half time in the last meeting, and they would see this as a real challenge for them, but we’d see it as a massive challenge as well, and I think maybe the disappointment of last weekend, knowing we pushed the world champions as close as we did, without getting the results we’d hoped for, we always knew this game was going to be a huge game, for many reasons.
“But in the context of what happened the last three weeks, it probably adds a bit more to it.”
As ever, selection is going to be key for Ireland. Losing Johnny Sexton and Robbie Henshaw – both such key men – is a hefty blow for Schmidt as his team get set to face one of the best in the world.
Paddy Jackson is clear favourite to come into the 10 shirt, while Luke Marshall would have started this month as the back-up to Henshaw at inside centre.
The Ulsterman obviously has a good understanding of Jackson’s skills, a further plus, although his performance against Canada included a number of errors.
Garry Ringrose did an excellent job at inside centre as Henshaw’s replacement last weekend, of course, and is a viable option there. Rory Scannell is perhaps the most in-form fit 12 that Ireland have, but is uncapped and unfamiliar with their systems, while Stuart Olding has not played since 22 October.
CJ Stander and Rob Kearney must complete their return-to-play protocols this week but both were “on track” to do so yesterday, according to Easterby.
The blindside flanker and fullback took part in Ireland’s training session at Carton House, although without doing contact work.
“They have been on return-to-play protocols, which doesn’t mean to say they cannot train at all,” said Easterby. “It just means that they have certain things to overcome, that’s all. There are certain things they were able to do but they were not able to do everything.”
Simon Zebo was another to carry out a modified training session due to the after-effects of cramping in his calves last weekend, but Tadhg Furlong trained fully after overcoming a dead leg.
So clearly there are still a few moving parts in all of this, meaning the final selection calls are likely to be made late by Ireland – perhaps even after tomorrow afternoon’s training session in some cases.
Those who do take to the Aviva Stadium pitch on Saturday must help Ireland’s attack to fire again, after their failure to score a try last weekend cost them dearly against the All Blacks.
“I think we created some opportunities and we probably found ourselves missing a cleanout that would maybe allow us to play the next phase to get behind them again and not far from the try line,” said Easterby.
“We lost a couple where we were a little bit slow and we got turned over. We had opportunities from two lineouts where we made a couple of mistakes; one we got penalised on and one we unfortunately dropped the ball. So I think we’re not far away.
“We probably didn’t make those mistakes in Chicago. And that was probably the difference between us scoring two tries and getting back on level terms with New Zealand, who were probably gifted a couple of tries as well, from our own perspective.
“There was very little in it. Three tries to none on paper doesn’t look great but when you look at it more in depth, we had more opportunities. It’s just that we didn’t make the mistakes in Chicago that we did in those key areas at the weekend.”
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