Feel-good factor indicates Farrell has learned lessons

This will be Andy Farrell's fifth consecutive World Cup stretching back to a first involvement as a player with England in 2007 and he has initiated a more relaxed team environment from day one while embracing chaos where Joe Schmidt craved order.

ALWAYS LEARNING: Head Coach Andy Farrell. Pic: ©INPHO/Dan Sheridan

If vibes were a currency then Ireland would be quids-in at this year’s World Cup. 

Players and staff have gushed over the pre-season put together by Andy Farrell and purred, in particular, over the focus on rugby rather than running alone. The contrast with the bankruptcy in confidence and form in 2019 is unavoidable.

Consider the roll call of testimonies already.

Jack Conan teased that Ireland “probably got a lot of things wrong four years ago” but then reined his thoughts in. 

Robbie Henshaw was less forthright but admitted the current approach has been preferable to the ‘get-your-fitness-up’ methods of yore. Tadhg Furlong has loved the concept of the odd week spent at home rather than a long stretch in camp.

Even players who weren’t involved in the failed mission in Japan have joined the chorus. Caelan Doris has lauded, well, just about everything about the summer’s work, not least the lack of “mindless running”. 

Craig Casey was just as effusive and even more revealing when asked for his take on the six weeks to date.

“I think the lads were talking about the 2019 World Cup campaign, it was absolutely barbaric, so this has been very enjoyable,” said the Munster scrum-half. We've kind of mixed the craic with really hard work, doing a lot of rugby skills, a lot of rugby sessions, so it's been brilliant.” 

No-one has mentioned Joe Schmidt’s name in any of this and maybe the starting point on his introduction here now should be to reiterate the unprecedented success the former Leinster coach brought about in the Six Nations and in historic results recorded against New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.

His two throws at the World Cup fell well short, though.

If the 2015 attempt was cursed by a scarcely believable injury list and Sean O’Brien’s suspension for the quarter-final against Argentina, then the follow-up was a spectacular non-event given the way in which his unbeatable 2018 side mutated into a shadow of itself for the most important year of all.

Flogging a side that was bereft of momentum and in need of something fresh smacked of the old line about how the beatings will improve until morale improves. The 57-15 defeat to England at Twickenham, which came on the back of a heavy week’s work in the Portuguese heat, emphasised the blinkered thinking.

The IRFU review that followed that World Cup didn’t point a finger directly at Schmidt either but it sure painted a clear enough picture of the former head coach being shunted under a bus with findings of mounting anxiety among the players and staff, a failure to develop the team’s game and a skewed focus on Scotland over Japan.

The signs are that Andy Farrell has learned lessons. This will be his fifth consecutive World Cup stretching back to a first involvement as a player with England in 2007 and he has initiated a more relaxed team environment from day one while embracing chaos where Schmidt craved order.

Schmidt freaked out about a late bus, Farrell relished it.

The evolution of the team’s playing style has been the most obvious expression of all this although the structures and high-performing culture inculcated by Schmidt shouldn’t be ignored. If the current boss - and Schmidt's former assistant - has played magpie by using bits and pieces picked up along the way then he has shed some stuff too.

“There's plenty," he said this week. "Honestly. There's plenty because of the experiences that you've had in regards to five/four (World Cups). You learn something from all of those, you know, and sometimes, yes, it is a conversation.

“But sometimes also, you can just know, sometimes, bringing things up and asking, you know, would you do this again, or would you do that again? Sometimes you know the answer. Probably it hurts for a conversation like that sometimes.” 

Nothing about past failures is definitive, aside from the results themselves. The 2019 disappointment was probably a combination of mistakes, trends and oversights that congealed into one big flop and it’s not as if everything Ireland did back then was radically different.

Rory Best spoke a few months after the fact and suggested that maybe Ireland, who allied that Iberian stint by training with black bin bags here at home, might have underestimated the humidity as opposed to the heat. Wales, on the other hand, lathered their rugby balls with baby oil and were a half-step away from making the final.

That simple? Clearly not.

“People want definite answers as to what went wrong, but there just isn't one,” Best told RTÉ that time.

Farrell gets the chance to wipe that slate clean now, but then so does Schmidt who has been part of the All Blacks brain trust since last summer’s series loss to Ireland. Now attack coach, he has been hailed for his part in resurrecting the fortunes of a side that looks to be right back on track.

Known, and often criticised, for the rigid structures he imposed on Ireland’s game plan, Schmidt was praised only this week by out-half Richie Mo’unga for the focus he has placed on engineering attacking space both for him and for Beauden Barrett at full-back.

“I guess that’s something that resonates with me and Baz anyway,” Mo’unga told SENZ Radio, “and when you’ve got two guys like us on the field then all we want to do is attack space. And if that’s being able to run the ball from our 22 or if that’s being able to kick for a crosskick or a chip kick over the top that’s something that excites us.” 

This shouldn’t be any surprise. Schmidt’s Leinster was a more expressive outfit in an attacking sense than his Ireland team. Any coach worth his or her salt will know that you fit your structure to your players rather than the other way around. In sport, a leopard should always be able to change its spots.