Ireland Boss Joe Schmidt Hits Out At Critics

Joe’s having none of it.

Ireland boss Joe Schmidt has been accused on many occasions of playing an attritional style of rugby that intern wears down his players and eventually leads to injury, albeit indirectly.

Schmidt has been accused of using one-out runners on a more than one occasion.

The Ireland coach has been accused of playing with an all-too attritional style which wears his players down and indirectly leads to injury. As part of that, he has been accused of using one-out runners too often.

This was put to him as he spoke to the newspapers yesterday and the Ireland head coach was having none of it.

“What is the percentage of one-out runners?” Schmidt asked, only to be greeted by silence.

“Yeah, a lot less than second handling,” he continued.

“Again, I try not to get distracted by people who throw out opinions and not back it up with what they’ve actually had a look at.

“There are times where it is inevitable that you are only going to get one transfer because defensive lines are coming so hard and so fast. If you try to get another transfer, it will be even more attritional because the guy who receives the second pass will get knocked over man and ball.

“Some of it is making sure, if you can, you manipulate the defensive line so that you can buy enough to make enough transfers.

“I think – I know it was Italy – that we got away from in that last 20 minutes. But, right through November, I’m not sure about the references to one-out runners because it is not something I saw in Chicago or in the Aviva (Stadium). “It is not something I’ve really seen so far in the Six Nations.

“Once you get into the opposition ’22’ and they don’t have to defend the backfield, they’ve got 14 or 15 guys on the front-line, it is very hard to put a number of passes together. “Just because of the nature of the defence; it is attritional because it is a very physical game. It is attritional because we wouldn’t be the biggest team around.

“We’ve got to try to be really accurate in what we do.

“It is one of those things. You try to keep a balance and you try to look after players by not forcing passes back to players who are under more pressure and loading them up with a man-and-ball situation.”