Safety first for Schmidt

Leinster are about to start a Heineken Cup campaign that could conceivably end with them becoming the first team to win it three times in a row — and in their own back yard — but all Joe Schmidt wanted to talk about yesterday was Exeter.

Well, Exeter and Montpellier.

A year ago, the Irish province opened its account against the French side who, like the Chiefs coming to the RDS this week, were making their bow in Europe’s elite club tournament and it took a late Jonathan Sexton drop goal to scrape a draw.

Leinster ultimately topped that pool with a dozen points to spare but Schmidt and Shane Jennings were busy men yesterday pouring cold water on the flames of expectation that are inevitably accompanying them into their latest continental campaign.

“The team’s understanding is that we are only one of 24 contenders,” said the Kiwi coach, whose injury list has shortened considerably in recent days. “People say you are defending a cup but you don’t really get to defend it.

“You enjoy a summer where it is yours for four weeks and then you are back into pre-season and it belongs to everybody equally until eight teams [qualify for the knockout stages and] decide who is going to fight it out at the end.

“If we were to get into the play-off stages again and work our way through it would be a fantastic achievement. I would love to be on the coat-tails of that because the team would have to be incredibly effective to do that. It would be a massive challenge.”

That it would, and is. Pool 5 is unquestionably one of the toughest drawn in this year’s tournament and, although the latest in a sublime sequence of battles with Clermont Auvergne stand out on the schedule, there are pitfalls aplenty elsewhere.

“There’s two stinkers [of pools],” said Schmidt. “Probably the other one is Toulouse, Leicester and Ospreys. I wouldn’t want to be in that one or this one.

“Exeter are almost the worst team to get... I’m not sure that Exeter deserve to be ranked in the fourth tier but because they haven’t been in the Heineken Cup before they are there. There’s no breathing space in a pool like our own.”

It was reassuring then to hear thelatest medical update at Leinster HQ yesterday with Brian O’Driscoll, Isa Nacewa and Kevin McLaughlin all “training well” after picking up knocks against Munster last week, Rob Kearney taking a full part and Gordon D’Arcy doing “bits”.

Long-term absentees aside, only the lock Quinn Roux and hooker Aaron Dundon are unavailable as things stand.

It’s nothing new for Schmidt who has had to juggle his resources all season due to the loss of players through injury and the IRFU’s player management programme and the resultant husbanding of resources has, in fact, become second nature.

“The last time no injuries? Not last year, to be honest. Brian O’Driscoll was injured throughout the pool stages and then we had Leo [Cullen], Damian Browne with the shoulder and in between that Jenno [Jennings] decided to take a couple of rests as well.

“So you are always managing that. Statistically, a player on average spends 17% of his time playing injured therefore you can bank on having 17% of your squad unavailable. Unfortunately, we have got around double that at the moment.”