Joe Schmidt has revealed that his Ireland squad is “a bit broken” from the Six Nations defeat by England.
The Ireland head coach has given a remarkably open evaluation of his squad in the wake of Sunday’s 26-16 victory over Italy, which saw the reigning champions avoid a near slip-up as they trailed 16-12 at half-time.
The opening weekend defeat by England, which saw Eddie Jones’ side emerge with their first victory at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium since 2013, has left Ireland facing an uphill struggle to retain their title, with Schmidt’s side needing to beat Wales on the final weekend of the Six Nations and hope one of Italy or Scotland does them a favour by beating England.
But that 32-20 loss appears to have had a lasting effect on the Irish squad, and Schmidt believes that their off-colour performances against Scotland and Italy since are down to a confidence dip caused by “feeling suffocated”.
“Sometimes when players haven’t played for a long time and they don’t quite get it perfect when they come back in,” he said.
“I think they can get a little frustrated and then try too hard and when they try too hard it doesn’t go well for them and then they start to lose a bit of confidence.
“Sometimes it’s just about taking a step back. We always talk about going forward. Sometimes you’ve got to take a step back and take a deep breath and not panic because I think the players were a bit broken by the fallout from the England game and then suddenly they start to question themselves.
“I think the coaching staff, it’s our job to re-energise the group and reignite the confidence.
“As soon as you lose that confidence, there’s a couple of times where I felt we could have taken a risk (against Italy) but we didn’t take the risk because we’re feeling a little bit suffocated and you can’t play within yourself, not if you want to beat a good team and the good teams are tough to beat.”
Schmidt went on to explain that he feels Ireland’s results over the past year have slightly glossed over their performances, although the Six Nations Grand Slam, a run of 11 wins from 12 matches and victory over the All Blacks meant that 2018 was by no means a bad year.
The New Zealander, who will leave his role with the Irish Rugby Football Union at the end of the year following the Rugby World Cup, with defence coach Andy Farrell taking over, believes that his side hit their peak in the first half of their victory over England at Twickenham in last year’s Six Nations finale. Schmidt feels from what he’s seen since that Ireland have yet to achieve that level again.
“I’m worried,” Schmidt added. “I was worried this time last year. I worry about performances when we win… this time last year we won 37-27 against Wales, we’re 30-27 up in the last play of the game and we get an intercept try to get a differential. I think you can sugarcoat things sometimes because of where you end up, not because of what you did in the process.
“(Last year) We beat France with a late drop goal in injury time. I felt we were superb in the first half against England, but that’s probably the benchmark and that’s what we’ve got to keep working our back towards.”
But Schmidt did have a warning for his English contemporaries. After escaping such a scare against an Italian side, Schmidt said England cannot afford to take the Azzurri lightly when they meet in the next round at Twickenham on 9 March. “I would caution against underestimating Italy, they’re difficult to cope with.”
