Irish forwards coach Simon Easterby yesterday dropped the broadest of hints that the Irish starting XV and replacements for the Six Nations' finale against Scotland in Murrayfield will remain largely unchanged. This is despite the high physical exertions of last Saturday's game in the Millennium Stadium, when the ball was in play for almost 41 minutes.
Allowing for variations in how this is measured, the norm is generally 34 to 37 minutes.
Nevertheless, in light of a clean bill of health, one or two optional changes would seem likely, with players such as Luke Fitzgerald and Cian Healy banging on the door for inclusion. Fitzgerald has been close to selection before in this campaign, and after Simon Zebo's performance level dipped from the high work-rate and aerial efficiency he displayed against England, his place in the starting team would seem to be under pressure.
Jack McGrath had a productive game in Cardiff to augment a fine campaign to date, and was unfortunate that his strong scrummaging display against first Samson Lee and then his debutant replacement Aaron Jarvis. Yet it was striking to note that not only Wayne Barnes, but also Romain Poite the next day, penalised the Irish and English loose-heads for boring in even though they were going forward.
While Barnes is more unpredictable, Poite normally rewards the team going forward no matter how this is achieved but, strikingly, this was not the case in the England-Scotland game on Saturday. It was almost as if a new directive had been issued to the referees and Joe Schmidt may conceivably also take this into account.
Greg Feek has been stressing that Cian Healy has been "chomping at the bit" and although he made that fateful knock-on when Ireland had worked a sizeable overlap to the right, as well as conceding the late penalty for holding on, the option for starting him will surely be weighed up again.
Seán Cronin, Iain Henderson and Eoin Reddan made very positive impacts off the bench, but taken in tandem with Joe Schmidt's comments post-match, Easterby's remarks yesterday did not suggest stalwarts such as Tory Best, Devin Toner and Conor Murray were about to make way. Likewise, the calls for promoting Ian Keatley and/or Ian Madigan at out-half or in a re-jigged midfield for Johnny Sexton and Jared Payne, partly with a World Cup in mind, look fanciful. Abandoning the Robbie Henshaw-Jared Payne combination now makes little sense.
“With only one game left and we have got a pretty good turnaround, a seven-day turnaround,” said Easterby when asked about the possibility for changes. “If it was six-day turnaround you might consider certain elements of that but no, again the players all trained today, everyone was available for training. With it being a seven day turnaround?it was a pretty attritional and high ball in play but that said we’ll make sure they are ready and they’re fresh come Saturday and well prepared.”
Reflecting on what went wrong last Saturday, Easterby accepted the welsh line-out defence and “human error” in also taking the wrap for four lost line-outs, including two at either end of the pitch which proved very costly.
Issues
“There are so many moving parts but they are easily fixable. That is my job, my responsibility to make sure that doesn’t happen again because clearly we had a few issues in the first half. At half time we spoke and were able to resolve a few of those issues and our second half lineout was far stronger and we got into those opportunities where we were five, six, seven out and we did get some gain from our maul. It was disappointing, no doubt. But we have a turnaround of seven days to put something right for the last game of the championship.”
Welcoming the chance to put things to right immediately, Easterby added: “The boys could be hurting for a lot longer if they might have three or four months before they put on a green jersey again. At least we have an opportunity to put some of the wrongs right within seven days.”
Highlighting discipline as another area that needed improving after conceding 11 penalties, and while clearly aggrieved at what they saw as Wayne Barnes’ different interpretation of the breakdown in each half as well as not rewarding Ireland’s apparent scrum supremacy, Easterby confirmed: “We have given our thoughts to Wayne (Barnes). We haven’t had any feedback and it’s probably best to wait until we’ve had that feedback before commenting on that.”
Easterby also conceded that: “We just didn’t quite take the right decisions at times and maybe we weren’t quite as clinical at the contact that we needed to be to create that speed of ball.”
If Wales by more than 21 points in Rome in the final day’s first game on Saturday, every additional point in their winning margin increases the need for Ireland to win by that subsequent margin. For example, were Wales to win by 30, Ireland would then have to beat Scotland by ten points or more to stay above the Welsh.
While acutely mindful that Ireland must only focus on the process of producing a performance to beat the Scots this week, Easterby admitted that such information would thus have to be relayed to the players at some juncture.
“We’re not looking too far ahead of what’s in front of us, but, yea, the Italy game will have finished by the time we take the pitch so we’ll have some concept of what we’re up against once we get out there.”
