Defending Six Nations champions Ireland are on a winning run of eight Tests, but coach Joe Schmidt has warned he fears France’s “ability to pull a rabbit out of the hat” ahead of today’s match between the two rivals.
The 49-year-old New Zealander, who guided the Irish to a memorable 22-20 win over France in Paris in March last year to secure the Six Nations title, has to a certain extent pulled a rabbit out of his own hat.
He has decided to start star flyhalf Jonathan Sexton after a 12-week absence because of suffering three concussions in a calendar year.
Photo: AFP
However, the former Leinster handler — whose side started the campaign off with a 26-3 victory in Rome over Italy last weekend — denies that and is more concerned about the French ability to strike from nowhere, although there was little of that in their workmanlike 15-8 win at home over Scotland on Saturday last week.
“France’s individual ability to beat us one-on-one and physically dominate us, not just in physical contact, but to break with the ball in space is a worry,” Schmidt said. “The greatest fear for me with regard to the French is they can pull a rabbit out of the hat.”
Schmidt, who knows several of the French side intimately from his days as No. 2 to now-Scotland handler Vern Cotter at Top 14 side Clermont, said he did not believe the French would target Sexton incessantly through their barrel-chested center Mathieu Bastareaud.
He is far more worried by how Sexton and the Irish midfield of Robbie Henshaw and Jared Payne will cope with the Toulon powerhouse.
“Jeez, it takes three players to take him down,” he said. “One to slow him down, one to go high and one to go low to drag him down!”
However, despite his protestations to the contrary, Schmidt let slip that playing Sexton now is with an eye on beating the French to keep alive their hopes of retaining the title or of winning the Grand Slam.
“He would have been as much of a risk to start as anyone else,” Schmidt said. “He’s very fit, he’s ready to go. He’s been training for 12 weeks. The only thing he has not been doing until this week is contact training.”
“We don’t have control over him playing for his club [Racing-Metro — who travel to Clermont the weekend after the France game], but we do have control over him playing this weekend,” Schmidt said. “If we get a result, we stay in the hunt and if we don’t, then it will be incredibly hard to be top of the pile come the end of the tournament.”
Schmidt, though, has added a huge amount of experience to the starting XV for, aside from Sexton, both influential No. 8 Jamie Heaslip and flanker Sean O’Brien also start after returning from injury.
For O’Brien, it will be the toughest of examinations as he has played only 50 minutes of rugby since September last year and it will be his first Test since the heroic loss to New Zealand in November 2013.
“On the one hand, with so many guys returning to the fold, we may not be as fluent as we would like to be,” Schmidt said. “However, these three guys have 130 caps between them. Their return builds a bit of confidence and brings extra leadership to the team.”
Schmidt’s concerns seem small in comparison with those of his France counterpart, Philippe Saint-Andre.
The former France captain’s reign — he took over after their narrow loss in the 2011 World Cup final — has yielded little in terms of results, especially away from home with just three wins (two in Scotland and one in Argentina) to his credit.
“It is important for us to win an away match against a major team, but to do that we have to be more effective than we were against Scotland,” Saint-Andre said. “They [Ireland] have won eight in a row and are the favorites for the title. We have to compete with them in every area, duels in the air where they are very strong, tackle hard and not give an inch.”
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