Players know drill to earn plane ticket to Japan

Self-preservation or team cohesion? The question would seem moot for an Ireland squad driven to succeed by men such as Joe Schmidt and Andy Farrell but with the clock counting relentlessly down towards World Cup selection decision day, the team being sent out against Italy today could be forgiven for trying to strike a balance between those opposing incentives.

Of course, as the Irish management and players have echoed all week, contributing positively to an effective, fluent team performance never did anyone harm in the search for gold stars from the bosses.

Yet circumstance and inner demons can often conspire against the greater good and for those reasons, there is plenty to learn from Ireland’s first outing of the summer at Aviva Stadium this afternoon.

For this may not be a Test match for players to secure their place on the plane to Japan next month but a less than convincing performance can certainly spell the end of their attempt to do so.

Two players left the Ireland camp at the start of the week as Schmidt’s original 45-man training squad suffered the first of several cuts before a final 31-player group is submitted to World Rugby on September 2 and the head coach is expected to further trim the numbers before the survivors board a plane to Portugal next Wednesday for a warm-weather training camp at Quinta do Lago.

In truth, there is plenty of heat on these players already, which is why defence coach Farrell, standing in for the absent Schmidt at Thursday’s team announcement in an unscheduled dry run for his eventual elevation to the top job after the World Cup, repeatedly stressed the need for a team-first approach ahead of individual ambition when the Azzurri come to Dublin today.

Asked what would constitute a good day’s work at the Aviva, Farrell replied: “Cohesion and not just that. Obviously, in the back of their minds they want to put their best foot forward, of course, everyone wants to do that and everyone wants to get on that plane.

“How they manage their own expectations of being at their best and how they apply that to how we want them to play in our team strategy.

“On top of that, how they are able to adapt and see the game for what it is. Because let’s make no bones about it, this is a big game for this team that will take the field for the first time this season and they will be feeling the pressure. They have got to deal with that, play the game for what it is but also play the game the Ireland way.

“We have been concentrating on us a lot over the last couple of weeks and I am confident enough in that we are willing and able to put the fundamentals of the game forward. What is that? Obviously, our skill levels have got to be high. We don’t know what the weather will be like. It looks like it might be raining at the weekend but our skill levels have got to be high and our physicality and our application have got to be there straight away, and the speed at which we want to play the game has to be spot on.

How do we do all that? We have to make sure we are as accurate as we possibly can and that’s how we will be judging ourselves.

No-one, least of all the Irish management will be expecting perfection from what is essentially a scratch XV showing just one survivor, Garry Ringrose at outside centre, from the team which started the final Six Nations game of the 2019 campaign last March 16.

Of this same line-up, only two - Chris Farrell and Jordi Murphy - remain from the side which faced Italy in Rome two rounds before that disappointing championship finale against Wales.

Conor O’Shea’s Italians show 10 changes from that game when Ireland had to dig deep to avoid a shock defeat before running out 26-16 winners at Stadio Olimpico. That was the second time last season that Italy had belied their underdog status and made the Irish look very ordinary, the first instance coming last November in Chicago when Schmidt bemoaned his players’ inability to rise above a “very stodgy” game in the opening half before running away to a 54-7 win at Soldier Field.

Farrell on Thursday demanded “better all-round if possible” than those two performances against a side that for all its changes will still present a physical, abrasive challenge.

“It has been addressed, we spoke about it. The game in Chicago, I thought we were trying to be too tidy if that makes sense? At half-time, we had a bit of a dressing down and picked ourselves up a little bit. I thought the second-half performance was pretty good in Chicago.

“We’re disappointed with that game in Rome, it’s well documented, the lads have spoken about it clearly this week as well. About how we were chasing the game and that compounded errors upon errors. We lost our way really, mentally more than anything.

“Are there lessons going to be learned from that? We hope so this weekend because it has been addressed.”