Still fuming a bit but well good article in independent.ie.
May be good that we are going poorly. States while the hype about Schmidt being best coach in world etc - the stats and results show he's clearly far from that. Points to how he was outsmarted by Howley and Cotter.
Now again I don't think Schmidt is a bad coach but he has to make he calls.
Alpha mentioned guys like Best Kearney Ryan and SOB.
Last night Kearney did well in air but poor otherwise. Fact Bowe was on bench really summed up there'd be no sub there.
Ryan. Was actually very good last night. Henderson played his best game at lock beside him so while I agree Ryan needs to go it's more for who.
Sean O'Brien was a good player but since injuries he's not same guy. Has been poor and how he was left on last night shows Schmidts weaknesses slightly.
Best has been poor so Scannell and Tracy need to be played. They've proven they can.
Like last night Schmidt gassed lads by not using bench and it cost us at least 1 scrum.
Looking at the headlines of the indo and through this write up it looks nothing more than tabloid trash, what a surprise!
The two losses can't be blamed on Schmidt, we had rwo set pieces on Scotland's 5m line where three points would have won the game, poor execution at the line out and off the back of the scrum cost us, the exact same happened yesterday except it was at least 4 set pieces and a try was needed, missed line outs, Henshaw's error, Earls' overrunning a training ground move are not coaching errors. There's not much Schmidt can do when his players can't keep their discipline when in sight of the tryline when they're executing the playbook perfectly elsewhere, there's not much he can do about attack when the defence is leaking tries with the strongest defenders but my guess is that if you looked at possession and territory stats in both the Wales and Scotland games we came out best, he wasn't outsmarted by Howley or Cotter, their players just gave more on the day and won due to our players severe lack of composure.
Ireland don't have the players to go a year without a bad result unless everything is perfect, its far from it right now, we're blooding a new centre and while he's been our best player this 6 nations his 11 and 15 aren't pulling their weight because one can't tackle and the other has the positional sense of a donkey, this needs changing but the players who will come in aren't there yet, Sweetnam and Payne were injured while Byrne's defensive errors are worse than Zebo's. Picking SOB shows no weakness either, the guy had good games against France and Italy and will likely do so again next week, Schmidt needs to go back to tinkering with his sides week to week, now that he has the information that his ball carrying back row doesn't work against sides attacking the breakdown, he shouldn't pick it but one match didn't show this. Jordi Murphy and SOB will be interchangeable for this in the future, with Murphy's ability to hit attacking rucks being second to none in terms of Irish backrows.
These losses wouldn't have been prevented by any other coach in the world and criticism of Schmidt is, for the most part, from people who want us to play like NZ even though we can't, a coach can't coach individual errors out of players he can only replace them, is anyone going to criticise him for not dropping Henshaw, Earls, Stander, Heaslip and Best next week because their individual errors cost us two games? No, because they're the best we have for the most part but some should and likely will be phased out in the next 12 months, if there's no change then get the knives out but if we win next week we'll likely go the rest of the year unbeaten and get to third in the world because as we are only NZ can beat us in Dublin with England potentially, but unlikely imo, to be on the cusp.
Depth is being built and Zebo and Earls are likely on the verge of becoming squad players while Best, RK and Ryan are on their way out, two years out from an RWC we're in a better position than the side we lost to yesterday and will have more caps and experience, we have three 10's in the country capable of cutting defences wide open but don't have the back three to take adavantage, when Sweetnam, Byrne, ROL and Kelleher are mature enough these attacking problems will go away and we'll be able to compete to our best in consecutive international windows. Individual errors by players, with the exception of Stander and Henshaw, who won't be starters at the next World Cup aren't reasons to criticise Schmidt. The picking of SOB isn't even a reason because both games lost were completely winnable with him. Our players are overhyped, Schmidt is the real deal and will help his players catch up.
