Simon Easterby: Ireland learned from Edinburgh upset
It is unlikely Joe Schmidt’s squad are entertaining the sort of attitudes some players have admitted entered the mindset in Edinburgh 12 months ago, when Ireland, cock-a-hoop after their history-making heroics against the All Blacks and Australia the previous November, sleepwalked into the 2017 championship opening round at Murrayfield and were ambushed by a rampant Scotland side.
Trailing 14-0 after 21 minutes after full-back Stuart Hogg twice carved open the Irish defence, and 21-5 down by the half-hour mark, Ireland sank to a 27-22 defeat that put them on the back foot for the rest of the campaign.
A similar outcome against France this Saturday, in a schedule book-ended by a trip to Twickenham on March 17, would cast a similar pall on the 2018 campaign and Easterby believes the Irish squad needs no explanation of the perils of overconfidence this time around, despite the positive vibes in the camp.
“If you think the players thought they were complacent going into that game, they just have to think about that game and realise they can’t be complacent, because of what happened,” said Easterby yesterday.
“If we’d have gone to Paris two years ago and won comfortably (they lost 10-9)... it’s not a place where we have a particularly good record. We’ve shown last year that if we start poorly in the first half — it’s very difficult in the Six Nations, when a team has momentum in a game — throughout the tournament, it’s very difficult to catch them up.
“We don’t need any reminding of how poor we were in that first half in Murrayfield, and how we need to get that right this weekend in Paris.”
Schmidt’s assistant coach believes if the players are to atone for last year and get off to a strong start in Paris, then they have to get their mental preparation spot on before they head into the cauldron of Stade de France.
“Whenever guys train, you want them to hit the ground running. They’ll have certain things they do in preparation before going out to train. We’d have a meeting then, a bit of readiness to get themselves mentally right, to go out and — without bashing people — get their roles right.
"I guess you’re trying to build that up each week. As a week goes on, we’ll step away as a coaching group and allow them to lead the way they’re going to play and the way training evolves.
“The players know the odd time when training hasn’t started well, it’s usually down to mental preparation. Physically, they’re fine, they’ve done it a thousand times, but mentally they haven’t quite got themselves in the right place to train and, if they do that repeatedly in the working week, it has that knock-on effect in matchday.
“There is a difference. You’re not going to knock lumps out of one another, but you want to make sure those little things are accurate, so we can replicate as much as we can in training in preparation for what we do on Saturday.”
Easterby reported no fresh injury concerns after a five-day warm-weather training camp in southern Spain last week. This allows the management a clean slate in terms of selection, as they look to plug the gaps left by injuries. The vacancy at openside flanker in the absence of Sean O’Brien is a particular conundrum, but the forwards coach is confident the candidates for the role are ready for action.
“Across the board at the moment, we are building depth in the back row. I guess one of the hardest decisions we had to make, missing Sean, who has been incredibly good for Ireland for a number of years, Jamie [Heaslip] as well is out and, yet, you’ve got guys who have stood up in their provinces: Leinster without Sean and Jamie; up step Jack Conan and Josh [van der Flier] and Dan [Leavy] and Jordi (Murphy).
"It’s the mark of the Irish player that, when someone drops out, we don’t see a massive reduction in quality in the next guy coming in, because they’ve been training with that team and they see it as an opportunity and they can slot in seamlessly, at times.
“It’s great to have these players available to us, it’s disappointing not to have the other guys, but there’s not much in it now. If we had 10 back-rows and all the guys were fit, there’s not much in it.
“It makes our job harder, you’re right, but it’s great, because that competition is exactly what we want and the depth is growing, not just in that position, but across the whole pack in particular.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
