Ireland determined to sign off on another high note against Australia

It has been quite the year for Irish rugby and no better way to finish it than by making a little more history at the Aviva Stadium this evening with a victory over Australia.

A first Test win in South Africa in June, the securing of Joe Schmidt’s services through to the 2019 World Cup and that long-awaited maiden victory over New Zealand in Chicago are plenty to celebrate, yet the head coach has asked his players to go to the well one last time and bid for success over the third great southern hemisphere nation.

Beating all three of the big guns in the same calendar year is no easy feat and the fact that England’s class of 2003 were the last to do so speaks volumes about the size of the task for a northern hemisphere country. That Martin Johnson went on to finish that year by lifting the William Webb Ellis Cup also points to the significance of such an achievement for so ambitious a squad as this group of Ireland players.

Yet it is looking back 13 months that draw comparisons for the current Irish management as they attempt to help their team peak one last time after two bruising encounters with the All Blacks in three weeks. If that doesn’t remind you of the rigours of the 2015 World Cup campaign, then throw in the fact a settled side that won back-to-back Six Nations Championships was torn asunder by injury heading into a quarter-final with Argentina and the parallels should become more obvious.

Just as Ireland went into that last eight contest in Cardiff missing the injured Paul O’Connell, Peter O’Mahony, Johnny Sexton, and Jared Payne, as well as a suspended Sean O’Brien, Schmidt has been forced to make do and mend this time around following last week’s 21-9 loss in the return match with New Zealand.

Gone is the midfield fulcrum of Sexton and Robbie Henshaw while those who remain include full-back Rob Kearney and blindside flanker CJ Stander who have been forced to miss some of this week’s preparations as they have undergone return-to-play protocols following concussions. Yesterday fresh doubts emerged over the fitness of Payne and O’Brien, two more vital cogs in the Schmidt gameplan on both sides of the ball.

Both should be fit to come through tests this morning but O’Mahony, still finding his feet after a knee injury he suffered in the final World Cup pool game against France, was called back from Munster to rejoin the squad for yesterday’s captain’s run training session at the Aviva, while provincial team-mate Rory Scannell has joined the standby list as midfield cover alongside Stuart Olding with Garry Ringrose in line to replace outside centre Payne as the defensive linchpin.

Parallels indeed, but both Schmidt and captain Rory Best, set to win his 100th Ireland cap this evening, are confident Ireland are in a much better place to avoid the sort of consequence that befell the injury-hit Irish at the World Cup, when Argentina hammered an understrength side 43-20 at the Millennium Stadium.

Last week’s loss to the All Blacks followed the early first-half losses of Henshaw, Sexton, and Stander, with Schmidt admitting: “When you’ve lost a fifth of the team in that first quarter, you can’t help but lose a bit of cohesion.”

Yet Schmidt finished his point by stressing the positives of that trio’s replacements: Ringrose, Paddy Jackson and Josh van der Flier, the first two of whom will start tonight with back row van der Flier set to stand in for O’Brien from the bench.

“Those guys trained together today, they played together for 60 minutes last week, they will hopefully benefit from that and get a bit of confidence going into Saturday,” the head coach added.

Best agreed yesterday that Ireland are much better set up now to absorb the losses and he pointed to the strides made during a series in South Africa last summer when Ireland were missing Sexton, Kearney, Iain Henderson, O’Mahony, and O’Brien and had every chance of adding to that first Test victory with a supposed second string.

“That’s the big difference today between the World Cup and now, a lot of those injuries were long-term, we played without them, we went to South Africa and the training week we had before we left; every day there was a new person dropping out,” Best said.

“We adapted and guys got international experience. You’ll not get a whole lot better than playing away in South Africa, especially that second Test at altitude in Johannesburg, that’s a real test of character for any international player, never mind a guy young enough in his career.

“We’ve come through all of that now, so we feel we’re a lot more adaptable. We’ve got a lot of young, exciting players who have gotten gametime. They now have that experience that they can bring in.”

Adding a win over the Wallabies, then, will be another step in the right direction. It’s a tough ask at the end of a draining international window, but if Ireland are victorious tonight, the future will look even rosier.