Schmidt on Jones: I enjoy the banter with Eddie because he's that irrepressible character

Joe Schmidt has played down rival Eddie Jones’s jibe about Johnny Sexton’s “bat phone” to referees, claiming he would like one of his own ahead of the Guinness Six Nations opener against England.

Last season’s Grand Slam winners Ireland kick off their title defence on February 2, at home to the English, the back-to-back champions they beat at Twickenham last March 17 to complete the whitewash, consigning Jones’s side to fifth place.

Ahead of the rematch in Dublin in nine days, England boss Jones suggested World Player of the Year Sexton enjoyed preferential treatment from referees, saying he “has the bat phone to the referee.

“He is the only one allowed to pick up the red phone to talk to the referee. When he talks, the referee listens.”

The rival coaches were both in London on Wednesday to help launch the 2019 Guinness Six Nations and asked for his reaction to Jones’s “bat phone” comments, Schmidt said: "Eddie went past me just before and he said, 'Right, let's get ready for a few grenades.' He's always incredibly hard to read, Eddie.

"I want to get hold of it (the bat phone) if I can. I'd like a direct dial myself. I don't know that Commissioner Gordon is in the building when matches are being played.

"I just think with Johnny, I'm not sure Owen (Farrell, the England fly-half) is that different, they're demanding of themselves, their co-players and officials. Look at (Wales fly-half) Dan Biggar, I don't think he's any different either. They're incredibly competitive and because they're incredibly competitive, they ask questions.

"The other thing is that they're all incredibly intelligent players, they all know the laws of the game. They've accumulated a level of experience in the game that if you wrap those three up, they probably have a couple of hundred Tests between them.

"You've got to make sure there's a respect. Johnny doesn't have as much to say for us because he's not skipper. Rory (Best) would be the guy who is more face-to-face conversations than bat phones but I think he manages that really well as the captain."

Johnny Sexton

Asked if he was expecting more grenades from England’s Australian head coach, Schmidt said: "He told me he was gonna, so I don't know. It keeps it fresh, it does keep it entertaining and it does make me think, 'Is he serious about that? Is Jack Nowell going to play seven? Is Tom Curry going to play there or is Wilson going to play there?'

"You do want to keep the opposition guessing, certainly once the ball gets kicked off you want to keep them guessing. Eddie does a good job of it because they're heading down to the Algarve. It's 15 minutes from where we are and he said he might whip across and have a look.

Because that (spying) is topical at the moment, he just throws it in the conversation. I enjoy the banter with Eddie because he's that irrepressible character. I respect him as a strategist, he's a smart coach.

Schmidt was referring to both side holding warm-weather training camps on the Portuguese coast and he added he was confident that Sexton would recover from the knee tendon injury that has sidelined the Leinster captain since the December 29 clash with Munster.

"Johnny trained yesterday. It was pretty quiet, to be honest. There was some fairly attritional European games at the weekend - I thought Munster/Exeter was one of the more attritional games I've seen in recent times.

"Obviously, Leinster played on the Sunday quite late in the afternoon so by the time they had finished, these last two days have been pretty quiet.

"Johnny will train fully on Thursday when we'll try to ramp the training up a little bit and our expectation is that he will get through that without any problems at all. He's very confident, the medical staff are confident, and so are we."

England have fly-half issues of their own with captain Owen Farrell undergoing a minor thumb procedure following Saracens’ Champions Cup win over Glasgow last weekend. Speaking at the launch, Farrell said he too was confident of being fit to face the Irish.

“Yeah, it’s fine. I’m hoping to train the end of this week so should be good,” he said.