IRELAND HAVE MADE a habit of moving onto the next game as rapidly as possible under Joe Schmidt, but Saturday’s defeat in Stade de France is going to linger on for a little longer than usual.
As always after defeat, Schmidt looked pale and exhausted following Ireland’s 10-9 failure against the French in Paris, and repeated viewings of the game since will not have helped his sense of dejection.
Certainly there was a degree of justification in his immediate comments about Jaco Peyper’s refereeing performance, but Schmidt knows better than anyone that Ireland had more than enough opportunities to close out this contest.
His belief is that Ireland’s strategy for this fixture was correct, but that the execution in difficult conditions had cost his side.
“I think you saw the strategy in the first half, it allowed us to get pressure on them and maybe we felt we didn’t finish,” said Schmidt.
We felt we were pretty unlucky that he [Peyper] didn’t at least have a look at that try Dave Kearney scored, and we felt the pressure we exerted on them frustrated them and caused them to commit errors and offer us penalties, but maybe we just feel that we didn’t get enough on the back of either of those things.
“We didn’t deliver quite what we needed and maybe we didn’t get the [refereeing] decisions that we thought we otherwise might have.”
Having drawn with Wales on the opening weekend of the championship, defeat in Paris leaves Ireland fourth in the Six Nations table and already looking unlikely to retain their title for a third consecutive season.
Schmidt is confident his players will be capable of mentally lifting themselves for Twickenham in two weeks’ time, but conceded that the Six Nations trophy may now be out of reach.
“To be honest, we’re a week-to-week team and the titles that we’ve won in the last two years have never been discussion points,” said Schmidt. “The next game has been the discussion point.
“There’s no hiding our disappointment. Mathematically there’s an outside chance but realistically we know it’s a very, very outside chance. For us, it will be build towards Twickenham and put together the best performance we can over there.”
First thing for Ireland will be an extremely difficult review at their Carton House base.
Schmidt said his coaching team would be looking back on the scrum battle in detail, arguing that “square scrums went out the window” after France introduced Rabah Slimani and Eddy Ben Arous.
As for Ireland’s own shortcomings, there are a litany for Schmidt to choose from as he aims to provide his players with as concise a summation as possible.
The head coach then has the task of attempting to shift the focus to that trip to London and the chance for Ireland to secure their first win in this year’s championship.
“I haven’t got my head around too much of what we’ll be looking to do against England,” said Schmidt on Saturday.
“We’ll use the next couple of days to assess who we’ve got fully fit. It’s unlikely that Sean O’Brien or Dave Kearney will be available and that’s a disappointment. Mike McCarthy, we’ll have to wait and see. It probably doesn’t help when the list is already quite substantial.”
Indeed, O’Brien and Kearney can be added to a list including Peter O’Mahony and Iain Henderson as absentees, although the returns of Mike Ross and Cian Healy for Leinster at the weekend will have been welcome.
Simon Zebo and Keith Earls, both of whom missed out on the France game narrowly due to injuries, are also likely to be back in the selection mix.
Given the lack of creativity in Ireland’s attack against the French, one or both of the Munster men seem likely to be recalled, while Ross has been missed at tighthead prop in the opening two games.
Uncapped trio Stuart McCloskey, Ultan Dillane and Josh van der Flier will hope for a promotion during the remainder of the championship too.
Selecting his team will be very much based on the available bodies, but even after the most frustrating of defeats in Stade de France, Schmidt’s faith in his players remains strong.
“The one thing I can’t fault the players for is their attitude and their effort and we have just got to keep trying with that,” said Schmidt.
“If it does mean new guys come in, they’ll come in with the right attitude and effort.”
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