How best to approach a World Cup? On the back of two wins is preferable to two defeats, but at what price? Given the costly nature of Wales' win over Italy, despite his observations about both teams' need for a win at Twickenham, Warren Gatland would probably have swapped places with Joe Schmidt on Saturday night.
Potentially losing Rhys Webb and Leigh Halfpenny to cruelly ill-timed injuries would be akin to Ireland losing Conor Murray and Rob Kearney. Instead, Joe Schmidt was able to play down the enforced departures of Murray, Johnny Sexton, Simon Zebo, Robbie Henshaw and Jack McGrath, with some not risked due to the World Cup looming into view, whereas on a Six Nations day they would have been.
Schmidt admitted losing only the unfortunate Tommy O’Donnell in the warm- up programme was a relative result:
“I’d take the [one] injury. I’m massively disappointed for Tommy because he was probably close to our player of the day at the Millennium and I was disappointed to lose him.
“But in the context of how much change and shifting and building of match minutes has been, I’d be satisfied from that perspective. I don’t think anyone’s satisfied that we lost, because we’re too competitive to be satisfied with that and hopefully that spurs us into the World Cup.”
Cruise
“If you cruise into the World Cup on the back of three or four wins and feeling that the world is rosy, there’s a danger in that as well. I don’t think there’s too much risk of us feeling the world is too rosy. We know we’ve got to roll our sleeves up and keep working really hard.”
The damage on the scoreboard could have been considerably worse too, for this was not a good Irish performance.
When he was told of Shane Horgan describing the first half as the worst 40 minutes of rugby played by Ireland under Schmidt, the coach laughed and said: "I appreciate that Shaggy."
“Look, it’s an interesting assessment. I don’t probably think back too much. I don’t think it was a great 40, but I don’t make too many comparisons going back to previous games . . . We came out and I think we were quite flat. We couldn’t get access to the ball, and we spent a lot of time defending . . . I think we got on the ball a couple of times but it was pretty hard to hang on to it and as a result we were only just hanging in there.
“At the same time if we score from the lineout or carrying ball very close to the line and go in 12-10, probably the same assessment can be made, but one small thing has changed. The fine margins are what decide games like that.”
“We didn’t execute where we should have and actually we hung in pretty well. You’re talking about one of the best teams in the world having a flood of possession and both the tries they got they had to beat a one- on-one individual contest to get to the line.”
In the event of Ireland running into England again at the semi-final stage, Schmidt accepted Ireland would not beat the hosts on this form.
Power and pace
Highlighting “the power and pace that England injected into their game”, the Irish coach said: “They’re a rare animal in the world of rugby in that they have incredible strength in depth and an incredibly talented group, that any time you’re not bang on, we are going to struggle against them.”
Both Schmidt and his English counterpart Stuart Lancaster were in attendance at the Stoop yesterday to watch their respective opening opponents, Canada and Fiji.
The Irish squad will remain in camp at Carton House for two days, before having four days off and then reassembling next Sunday.
Next up, that little thing called the World Cup.
