While tomorrow’s Irish line-up looks more familiar, opportunity again knocks for a chosen few against an equally more familiar and potent Wales.
And as this is Ireland's last warm-up before the World Cup squad is finalised in the 48 hours to follow, for those picked to play at the Aviva Stadium tomorrow the ball is now in their court.
Into this category assuredly fall Keith Earls, Luke Fitzgerald and Dave Kearney, all of whom, as expected, have been picked to start along with Rob Kearney from the ten back three players in the squad vying for maybe six places.
Even Felix Jones may be better placed on the bench compared to the Ulster trio of Tommy Bowe, Andrew Trimble and Craig Gilroy, who play in Edinburgh tonight. Ditto Fergus McFadden, on the bench at Donnybrook for Leinster against Moseley tonight (where Joe Schmidt will be in attendance) along with five other Irish squad members on duty.
The 10th outside back, Simon Zebo, is given a weekend off to ponder whether he has sufficient good work banked.
Schmidt maintained some of those involved with their provinces will make the cut, and some still with the Irish squad may not. Yet a strong showing against a first-choice Welsh backline would be hard for Schmidt to ignore, especially alongside the returning Peter O'Mahony, Conor Murray, Johnny Sexton, Robbie Henshaw and Rob Kearney, with Paul O'Connell restored to the captaincy in his farewell Test on Irish soil.
The group
“Looking at the team, there’s a number of those guys who, historically, have had a lot of time in the group but there’s some of them who haven’t had a lot of time in the group at all,” said Schmidt, who highlighted the examples of
Nathan White
, set to make his first Test start, and
Tadhg Furlong
, set to make his debut off the bench.
This “contrast” was “an attempt from us to make some last-minute decisions around different positions, and also to start to try to gain some game rhythm for guys who are likely to travel,” he added.
However, the Irish head coach also agreed it would be the most searching preparatory game to date.
“Yea, I think so. I do think the two teams will both really be up for the challenge as two collectives, and within that there’s the individual efforts to make sure they got on the plane. The individual match-ups will be really interesting and . . could be world class.”
In this Schmidt cited two Lions captains going head-to-head for the umpteenth time. “I don’t think you get much more world class than Paul O’Connell and that’s demonstrated by the longevity, the number of games and the leadership. Obviously he will be playing his last Test at the Aviva and it will be a special end for him if we get a good result. He’s up against Alun Wyn Jones, who is world class.”
That direction
Schmidt added the examples of Johnny Sexton v
Dan Biggar
, Rhys Webb v Conor Murray, Rob Kearney v
Leigh Halfpenny
and
Jamie Roberts
coming up against Robbie Henshaw.
“I just hope it’s a cracking day and touch wood both the red and the green team get through without injury to springboard themselves a little closer to the World Cup.”
Schmidt will not be inclined to gamble on wounded players. While hailing Andrew Trimble’s fine performances throughout the 2013-14 season, and his encouraging return against Wales three weeks ago, the coach noted: “It’s hard when there’s only been 33 minutes of rugby in the last eight months and, while we took him off (against Wales) more as a precaution than anything else, it did take him a while to get through the bruising and get fully up and running.”
After a good week in training for Cian Healy, Schmidt ventured that the Irish loose-head could return to the bench a week hence against England, while he expressed confidence in Marty Moore proving his fitness by then after returning to training yesterday. But that would seem like a prerequisite for Ireland to name both amongst the five chosen props.
Cutting 15 players, and informing them individually, before submitting his squad by 5pm on Monday and publicly announcing it at lunchtime on Tuesday, would be the most difficult task of his coaching career to date. You tell them as honestly as you can, that’s all you can do.”
“It is an imperfect process and it will be, potentially, not quite the perfect 31,” he added. “There will be a degree of risk in some positions because our cover won’t be as deep as we’d like it to be and there’ll be some really good cover in other positions.”
No-one could doubt Schmidt’s claim that he and his coaches have more information at hand and have exhaustively examined this evidence.
“In hindsight someone potentially will be able to stand up and say, ‘they got that wrong’. Or probably because I’m the one who’s going to be announcing it, it’ll be ‘he got that wrong’ and I’ve got to put my hand up if we do get something wrong. I’ve got my fingers crossed.”
