Schmidt confident cavalry coming to Ireland’s aid ahead of France visit

Joe Schmidt has suggested Ireland will be in much better shape with the return of some frontline stars when France visit Dublin on March 10.

Ireland laboured to a 26-16 victory over Italy in their Guinness Six Nations game in Rome on Sunday, without a number of injured and rested players, six of whom had started the Grand Slam victory over England last March, while Bundee Aki was an early departure following a Head Injury Assessment (HIA).

Schmidt hopes to see the cavalry come into view over the next 12 days, with Ireland welcoming a match-free weekend to re-energise with a short training camp in Belfast.

Among the returnees could be CJ Stander, the Munster No. 8 who received facial injuries in the opening game against England and was believed to be out for the rest of the championship, while the head coach is also optimistic there could be returns for fly-half Joey Carbery (hamstring) and centres Garry Ringrose (knee) and Robbie Henshaw (thigh) for the French game.

“There are a few guys, potentially Joey will be back, CJ, Garry Ringrose; Robbie Henshaw could probably have played (Sunday), plus the non-injured guys, James Ryan, Cian Healy, Rory Best.

“We’ll probably try and fit some of those guys in for the French game and then with a six-day turnaround, anyone who is not 100% that week may come in for the Welsh week.”

Schmidt also said he was encouraged by second row Tadhg Beirne’s return from a knee injury for Munster against Ospreys on Friday night, his first game since January 19.

Tadhg Beirne

“I saw bits of it, he did really well, and Tadhg is the sort of guy, who because of his volume of minutes, it was probably not the worst thing for him to have a bit of a break. But for him to hit the ground running was super.”

For all the disappointment at the much-changed team’s performance, Schmidt said he would continue to give his non-frontline players more opportunities in the remaining two games of the championship with an eye on the World Cup later this year.

“We will just keep balancing it and keep trying to have a look at combinations, We don’t get a lot of time with the players so we want to try to maximise this time to give an opportunity to players and also to learn about them. We will keep cataloguing that and that will help us build towards some decisions further down the line.”

Several made their first SIx Nations starts in Rome on Sunday and while it was a far from fluent team display that saw Ireland trail 16-12 at half-time, Schmidt chose not to call out individuals as he rallied his side ahead of the second half.

“What I said is ‘this is great, we’re under pressure, how do we respond as a collective?’ I didn’t want to put pressure on individuals because we’ve got some individuals who are new into the team and then we had individuals who are trying to get their form back and build their way back into the team.

“It was really about the collective and making sure they got together and created sufficient opportunity that we could get the five points we needed.”