JOE SCHMIDT WAS keeping his tactical cards close to his chest after naming his team at Carton House yesterday.
The coach and his squad ate up much of their media committed time praising their opponents and signalling just how tough it will be to “nullify,” “contain” and shut down Australia.
These days, nobody hugs his cards quite so warmly as Simon Zebo. So despite TheScore.ie‘s best efforts to get the Corkman to signal some sort of intent, he kept a tight hold of the party line:
“We’ll just go out and play the conditions, play how we see we need to play the game and where we need to play the game to get the win…. I can’t give away anything else.”
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A closely guarded hand, but not a pokerface. As Zebo allows his wide smile to take over his face by the end of the sentence.
“If the day is wet and greasy like against South Africa and all I’m doing is kick-chase well be more than happy as long as we can get the win.
Of course, the containment strategy was one of the few problems arising out of Schmidt’s first win over one of the Southern hemisphere’s big three. The dearth of passing outside of the half-backs was completely at odds with the accepted norm for a Schmidt team and, for some, that’s an issue that needs to be addressed in this month’s final Test.
“I hope we get more ball than against South Africa,” the Kiwi said before addressing that fixture’s notable zero statistic in offloads.
“When you are struggling to win the ball and win collisions it’s hard to get a good front foot offloading game going,
“An Offloading game works when you’re going forward. if you’re going backwards and giving the ball to someone else they’re not in a position to take it forward anyway.
“If we can get a bit of front foot ball… we’ve seen Robbie and Gordon get good balls away through the contact, so if that’s something we can manufacture, if they can get that front foot ball, then I’d be delighted if that allowed them to open up the game a little bit.”
It would seem we’ll have to wait until 4.30pm on Saturday to see the attacking plan Schmidt has installed behind closed doors.
Jack Conan not content just to keep Leinster number 8 jersey warm