Schmidt: Irish players ‘too good’ not to raise game for Les Bleus

FRENCH tails are up, Irish heads are down.

On the face of it, then, hardly the best time to host last year’s Grand Slam champions in Dublin, but not according to Joe Schmidt.

The Leinster coach should know something of the mindset in both camps given his current portfolio and the three years he spent immersed in the Top 14 with Clermont Auvergne. And he can see last weekend’s events standing to the Irish.

“If anything, they get France at not the worst time, France on a high,” Schmidt reasoned yesterday. “They might underestimate the tenacity of the Irish performance they will encounter on Sunday.

“Also the quality of the Irish performance. I know that people were a little bit critical of some of the (Irish) players but those players are too good not to raise their level for a game against France.”

Naturally enough, Schmidt was paying most attention to his own boys on Saturday. 10 Leinster representatives were involved at the Stadio Flaminio and none faced a tougher assignment, or greater scrutiny, than Mike Ross.

Championed for months by the media, the tight-head prop could hardly have asked for a more searching examination than an Italian pack that carries a fearsome reputation.

“I thought he did really well in tough circumstances,” said Schmidt. “My personal opinion is that it doesn’t surprise me the Irish panel are going to ask some questions about how the scrum was refereed.

“It appeared that (Salvatore) Perugini released his bind very, very early. It allowed him to free himself to scrummage as he pleased. There is probably some interesting debates to be had there.

“I thought that made it very difficult for Rossy but I thought he stuck to the task well. I thought he did some good things around the park, which was one of the questions being asked about him.”

Schmidt has his own Italian test to pass this week.

Aironi are the visitors to the RDS on Thursday night in the Magners League and the Leinster coach is having to make do without 15 of his squad’s finest thanks to the Six Nations and injury.

Just as well, then, that both Rhys Ruddock and Kevin McLaughlin were released back to their province to train yesterday and the expectation is that both will be handed much-needed game time against Aironi.

Joining them on provincial duty this week after their recent defeat of England Saxons with the Irish Wolfhounds are Isaac Boss, Eoin O’Malley, David Kearney and Dominic Ryan.

Jamie Heaslip was also spotted hanging around Leinster base camp yesterday but only for further rehab work on his injured ankle and Rob Kearney and Shane Horgan are in the same boat.

So, too, is prop Stan Wright who is yet to play this season but who may well return in time for the visit to Cardiff Stadium on Saturday week. By then, Leinster will hope to have put memories of their own Italian shocker to bed.

Five months have passed since the Irish province made their first acquaintance with an Italian side in the Magners League and it was far from an auspicious occasion at the Stadio di Monigo where Treviso won 29-13.

That was back in Schmidt’s early days but it was a sufficiently jarring result for one disgruntled fan to barge in on the post-match press conference and paint an apocalyptic scenario for the newly-arrived Kiwi coach.

“I don’t think we reinvented the wheel here at Leinster at all but we were doing a few things a little bit different and to be quite honest we weren’t on the same page. I got asked if this is the beginning of the end for Leinster rugby after.

“I thought that was probably a bit dramatised. He did a great job just to set a scene. I think my response was ‘next question’. I didn’t think it merited a response and the response has been made the last three or four months.