‘So Joe, what do you make of facing Argentina?’ was the closing press conference question to Ireland’s head coach, or words to that effect.
“The biggest attraction for us in playing Argentina was the seven-day turn-around, not because we want to play them,” he began.
“I think they’ve been incredibly good, not just since the Rugby World Cup started but I had a very good look at their win in Durban and to put the South Africans away like that is a major performance.
“They’ve have cruised through their group. They maybe should have been a few points further ahead in their first match against the All Blacks in the first round of their pool. That didn’t work out for them at the end but they put the All Blacks under an immense amount of pressure and we know for us that the physicality, the speed, the skill of the Argentinians, is going to challenge us massively. Their set-piece is going to be a challenge and for us this was a bit of an end point. We haven’t done too much work on looking ahead, just because we didn’t know who we were going to be playing because we had that much respect for the French that we knew it was going to crank things up and we wanted to stay fresh and take a fresh look at the week ahead once we got this game done.”
‘Is that so, Joe?’ we might have asked had he drawn breath?
“No mistake I’ve certainly kept a close eye on them and they have put together some pretty impressive stuff,” he went on.
“I think out wide there’s some fantastic challenges to try to shut down. I thought Juan Imhoff, some of the performances he’s had have shown his ability to beat bigger men and (Santiago) Cordero has been a phenomenal contributor for them. Across the board whether its (Tomas) Cubelli or (Martin) Landajo at 9 and up front you know you’re going to have a tough day out with (Marcos) Ayerza and (Agustin) Creevy and (Nahuel Tatez) Chapparo and (Ramiro) Herreira, those sort of guys in the front row. Then the loose forwards, I think the problem for Daniel (Hourcade, Argentina’s coach) is sometimes who to leave out rather than who he puts in because there’s some fantastic young talent in their back-row as well as the really good experience of the likes of Fernandez-Lobbe.
“So I haven’t had a look at them, but I know a few of them and it probably doesn’t make me feel particularly comfortable to be honest.”
Oh how we laughed and, for all that he kept a straight face, Joe seemed to be pretty much in on the joke. More than two and half minutes, off the cuff, uninterrupted on opponents he has yet to analyse.
That is probably largely genuine because Schmidt, seen by a growing number of the well-informed as the world’s best coach, is clearly an avid student of the game, but the one implausible bit was the claim that the only benefit in topping Pool D was an extra day’s rest.
It was similar to Wallabies heads coach Michael Cheika’s claim, when asked about winning Pool A, that there are no preferred draws when it gets to the knockout stage. If so why were his front-line troops and those of Wales knocking lumps out of one another as they did on Saturday afternoon?
Of course Schmidt and Cheika respectively wanted to avoid New Zealand and South Africa, but then anyone listening to or reading any of the head coaches over the next few days should be accompanied by a salt cellar at all times.
Which is not to say it is not worth trying to analyse the messages.
For my money Schmidt was seeking to let the Pumas know that even before he sits down to detailed analysis of their performances at this tournament, he is well up to pace with what they can do.
Similarly Cheika’s essential message to Scotland seemed to be that if any complacency contributed to their defeats in two of the teams’ three previous meetings, there will be no repeat of that from the Southern Hemisphere champions in a World Cup quarter-final.
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