Ruddock: Great Irish model will fuel more success

Mike Ruddock has lauded the Irish professional rugby model as being close to perfection and predicts there is ‘more to come’ as Joe Schmidt’s side bid to claim more silverware.

Brian O’Driscoll may have hung up his international boots but former Welsh Grand Slam winning coach Ruddock, now the Ireland U20 boss, has no fears for the future given the talent at Schmidt’s disposal.

“Joe (Schmidt) has done a wonderful job already but there is more to come. Yes, Brian’s departure is likely to be felt, but it should be pointed out that Ireland achieved a championship win this season without other big names, the likes of Tommy Bowe, and Sean O’Brien who was European Player of the Year. It shows the strength of Irish rugby that whoever Joe was picking was able to step up to the mark and do a great job.”

Overall, Ruddock says the system of governance in running the game here is crucial to the success of the national side.

“It’s a great model. I suppose the principle of club rugby is that you want success at RaboDirect and Heineken Cup levels and the Irish provinces, Munster, Leinster and Ulster, have achieved that.

“In the process, and more recently with the big help of Connacht, they are producing a long list of home-grown players which ultimately benefits everyone. In terms of wanting success, the French are striving for it, but they’re buying in talent to do it and over time that’s going to affect their ability to have the depth in the national team that they want and provide the competition for places that they will need.

“The Welsh model was set up in a rush, the Union didn’t own the four franchises, the Regions, they (the WRU) were giving them money and it wasn’t policed in the same way as Irish provinces are in terms of recruitment of players and coaches. Obviously they have had to sign agreements with the regions to take the players from them like the English clubs, so although they’re technically funded by the Union they’re not really part of the Union. That leads to friction and it has caused animosity in recent times. The players pick up on that, and some of them have left because of salary caps being introduced; a lot of those guys have gone off to France so that’s hardly ideal. ““Here in Ireland the headlines are about rugby, not about fractious disagreements between the union and regional teams, so headlines are all generally about players playing well, teams winning, and that makes little Johnny in the street and his dad want to come and watch rugby rather than saying, ‘well, we don’t want to watch that because the players are leaving’.

“The product is very good, there’s a lot of synergy and empathy throughout the whole system and it’s all geared to pushing the talent through to Joe Schmidt.”

Although Ruddock’s Irish U20 side had a below-par Six Nations campaigns, he’s confident of a decent run when he leads his squad into battle when New Zealand host the Junior World Cup in June.

“Ideally what you want is having the U20’s winning every tournament, even winning the World Cup itself as New Zealand have been doing. If you could do that you would probably be producing 20 players a year out of each individual group, but we have been very competitive this past few years.

“We’ve beaten Australia, South Africa, England, France and we’ve run New Zealand very close, so there’s a feeling that we have a group of players well capable of stepping up and, mentally, these guys are neither afraid of nor intimidated by seemingly bigger opposition anymore.”

Ireland finished fourth in the Six Nations, losing to England (heavily) Wales and France, but Ruddock is convinced they will make an impact in the World Cup, pitched as they are in the same group as Wales, France and Fiji.