Joe Schmidt delight at performance of emerging stars

Joe Schmidt has warned his injured frontliners against assuming they can walk straight back into the Ireland starting XV as he looks forward to life with a full squad at his disposal.

Ireland’s 51-15 victory over Italy at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday was Schmidt’s first victory of the campaign and a reward, he said, for the hard work his injury-hit squad had put in during the 2016 RBS 6 Nations.

With one game to play, at home to Scotland on Saturday evening, there is a chance of a top-three finish for the outgoing back-to-back champions and victory would be the ideal launch point for preparations to get under way for a daunting June tour to South Africa.

Sean O’Brien, Peter O’Mahony, Iain Henderson, Dave Kearney and Tommy Bowe are all expected to have recovered from lengthy spells on the sidelines to make the flight for Cape Town in 13 weeks while the head coach is hopeful British & Irish Lions duo Rob Kearney and Cian Healy as well as Eoin Reddan will recover from injury to be available for the visit of the Scots to Dublin this weekend.

Yet the performances of those who have filled the breach in their absences do not make their selections guaranteed. Schmidt has seen impressive debuts in this championship from CJ Stander, Stuart McCloskey, Josh van der Flier and Ultan Dillane while against Italy Simon Zebo had his best 80 minutes for Ireland as he stood in for Kearney at full-back and Kieran Marmion gave fellow scrum-half Reddan food for thought with a lively cameo off the bench as back-up for Conor Murray.

Schmidt said he felt all bodes well for Ireland’s future and he hoped the nine-try demolition of Italy threw down the gauntlet to those not involved. “What would be reasonable for us and hopefully what we’ll hopefully profit from in the future is that we’ve had guys emerge who we’re pretty excited about,” the Ireland boss said.

“There’s guys who’ve said, ‘look, this guy maybe usually has this jersey but I’ve done pretty well in it and I’d like to keep my hand up.’

“The perfect scenario is when you get competition from within a squad. Guys have emerged a bit and are challenging players for their positions. Players are making an assumption that they’ll come back straight back in and the guys that aren’t available are too committed to make assumptions, but I think that would be a really good reasonable return if we could get into that third or fourth spot (in the Six Nations).

“That would be in the context of where we are right now, that would be a really positive return but for us when we’re always trying to plan ahead albeit an eye for the future but certainly our work is the week that we’re in it we’re enthusiastic about what may potentially come out of this championship.”

Schmidt agreed Zebo, whose clever offload to Jared Payne sparked the move that led to the try of the game finished by Jamie Heaslip at the end of the opening period, was deserving of another look in the number 15 jersey next weekend.

“We will certainly look at him at full-back again. We looked at him at full-back this week, because we were confident that he would deliver for us.

“He got a knock, had a sore elbow for a while - just as he was chasing the ball a guy went to kick it and kicked his elbow instead and you get that numbness through your hand when someone hits that end of the humerus.

“For about 10 minutes he was struggling, but it didn’t look like he was struggling with that same hand when he managed to get his palm inverted and get that ball away to allow Jared Payne a bit of space.

“There are guys who knew this game was an opportunity, who wanted to say: ‘Look, I’m going to work really hard for this jersey’. We’ll have a look back and see how, what and why to try and put together a really competitive group for next week and some of those decisions I’ve no doubt will be really tight.

“We’ve been trying to balance those decisions, we’re lacking a bit of continuity this championship, how do we make sure we can keep a bit of continuity and at the same time grow the group because we want to give opportunity.”