Life as a head coach has been about as smooth an experience as Joe Schmidt could have reasonably expected since he took on the Leinster job, then the Ireland one he currently holds. Which is to say it has been as smooth as the man himself. Leinster won titles as soon as he took over, and his record as Ireland coach reads: two Six Nations campaigns, two Six Nations titles.
Now, though, he is entering choppy waters for the first time. Pedants will no doubt point to the theoretical sequence of events that could still result in an unprecedented third Six Nations title in a row, but, basically, this defeat from a winning position, in conjunction with the preceding weekend’s draw (from a winning position), has put an end to Irish hopes. The rest of the championship stretches out now as an extended opportunity to focus on the next game, build confidence, try new combinations and all those other euphemisms for accept defeat.
“To be honest, we are a week-to-week team,” he said. “The titles that we have won in the last two years have never been discussion points. The next game has been the discussion point. There’s no hiding our disappointment that, while mathematically there’s an outside chance, realistically we know that it is a very, very outside chance. For us it is about building towards Twickenham and putting together the best performance we can.”
He is welcome to focus on the next game; for the rest of us, how Schmidt deals with this new dynamic will be of more interest. So far, so good – the breezy, affable manner is holding up. It is the words delivered, though, that are beginning to show some strain. He could not resist the old chestnut of expressing his desire not to discuss the referee before proceeding to do exactly that. Then it was misgivings about France’s scrummaging that he almost avoided talking about.
“When Rabah Slimani and Eddy Ben Arous came on, the square scrum went out of the window and all sorts of angles came in to play. It makes it very difficult to scrum against a team like that. It is incredibly frustrating. When that happens and you have got a bit of inexperience in the tight five around Rory [Best], it is hard for him to find solutions if those things are permitted.”
The introduction of those two French props marked the turning point in a game Ireland had been managing quite comfortably. The drizzle over Paris was relentless for the first hour, and the visitors, with their vastly more experienced half-backs, were making life miserable for their inexperienced hosts. France did not make it into Ireland’s 22 for anything like a sustained period until well into the second half. Ireland’s 9-3 lead at that point, which they held until the final 10 minutes, seemed a little paltry, all things considered – as Schmidt ruefully acknowledged.
His inexperienced props had also been dominating at scrum time, but that edge disappeared when Ben Arous and Slimani came on. Whether that was through fair means or foul – and what scrum has ever been fair? – the net result was a loss of control catastrophic for those championship hopes. A penalty at a scrum five metres out, which Schmidt was particularly unhappy about, allowed France to clear their lines, and they never looked back. Within a few minutes they were driving through Ireland at a series of scrums at the other end, from the fourth of which the two Maximes, Machenaud and Médard, combined to send the latter over for the game’s only try, 10 minutes from time. Game won for France.
So now the spotlight on Schmidt intensifies, but it would be churlish not to acknowledge the circumstances surrounding the unfamiliar difficulties he finds himself in. One might pinpoint the last of Ireland’s matches against France as the start of the trouble. Not only was it to prove the last time the world enjoyed the sight of Paul O’Connell in action, it was the match in which they lost a raft of key men to injury, leaving them fatally compromised against Argentina in the World Cup quarter-final.
Since then, their injury problems have deepened further, and their provinces have crashed out of Europe. Already shorn of around half a dozen forwards and Simon Zebo for this match, they lost Sean O’Brien and Dave Kearney in the first half, and Mike McCarthy and Johnny Sexton in the second, while Jared Payne was forced to soldier on with a dead leg for the last half-hour. The first two are unlikely to be fit for England in a fortnight’s time.
France are becoming a bogey team for Ireland, and not for rugby reasons. There was clear ill-feeling in the Ireland camp about some of the challenges the home side were allowed to get away with. Yoann Maestri and Guilhem Guirado may yet hear more about their respective challenges on Sexton and Kearney. The latter was taken out of the game on the half-hour mark, while Sexton was eventually forced off just before France’s try, having endured a battering. “Johnny knows what he’s going to get when he comes here, and he was prepared for it,” said Schmidt. “But he was pretty knocked around at the end.”
All in all, it was a dark day for Ireland, and while France emerge from their opening two home games with two wins they are hardly looking much brighter. Nevertheless, Guy Novès’s lot is looking comfortably the more appealing. For Schmidt, the less pleasant aspects of life as a head coach await.
France Medard; Thomas (Bonneval, 45), Mermoz, Danty (Doussain, 77), Vakatawa; Plisson, Bezy (Machenaud, 57); Poirot (Ben Arous, 45; Poirot, 74), Guirado (capt; Chat 74), Antonio (Slimani, 45), Flanquart, Maestri (Jedrasiak, 59), Lauret, Camara (Goujon, 68), Chouly.
Try Medard Con Plisson Pen Plisson.
Ireland R Kearney; Trimble, Payne, Henshaw, D Kearney (McFadden, 30); Sexton (Madigan, 70), Murray; McGrath, R Best (capt; Strauss, 72), White (Furlong, 63), McCarthy (Ryan, 63), Toner, Stander, O’Brien (O’Donnell, 20), Heaslip.
Pens Sexton 3.
Referee J Peyper (South Africa). Att 80,000.
