Ireland - Post Australia

Two games into this Autumn international series, and the JS era, we appear to be in the same situation as we were before Kidney in the sense most of seem to feel further out of touch from international rugby than we ever thought possible. It now feels a distant memory the days between 2005-2010 where we could probably match most teams in the world and beat them.

However, this loss was probably coming, and hey, its probably a good thing. Heres why. I think this Ireland team is still suffering from a bad hangover from the Kidney era's eratic ways. It was so stagnant at the end as the team seemed to gather negative momentum. Every successive game seems to give them reason to play worse as they remember the previous one. That has to be replaced, its a mindset thing and it's going to take a while. No coach in world rugby was going to be able to coach Ireland to beat Australia today. What happened wasn't in anyway the coaches fault. He picked the right gameplan and everything. There was just a clear issue in the players putting that gameplan into action.

Some people are calling for heads already, some are writing off our entire squad as average and the Heineken cup success's being something far below the international stage as well! (That would be a valid argument until you see the likes of Toulon who have the entire Springbok team of last year, if teams can beat the likes of them in this competition they can damn well do it on the international stage). Perhaps the truth is our media and ourselves have become too expectant of success that we just demand in straight away. I believe Ireland have/had one of the most talented squads in world rugby but because Kidney isn't a tactical genius of a coach, we unluckily didn't see the best of them.

We must go easy on the team, Schmidt will damn well tear some heads off in that dressing room on Monday, and rightly so. But lets get one thing clear, no coach could of saved Ireland from what happened yesterday. You could see what Schmidt wanted, there was great phases of play by Ireland in the first 40 mins. Mainly from 25-40 minutes. Perhaps should of had two tries even, if we got them I still believe we would've lost, but it would've just been a ridiculous scoreline such as 34 37. The problem was in the players not trusting themselves, being nervous and just plain erratic. Sloppy defense, lethargic at spreading out.

Schmidt is going to need time to get this team together and to blow out the mental scars left over from the Kidney era. When Kidney took over he had an average autumn campaign, and his solution before the 6N was to remove the old stock and fit in some new ones. JS may have to remove some older faces, purely to make a fresh start. Whatever happens, his task isn't the same as most coaches, he has to repair a lot of damage thats gone on in truth since atleast 2010. Perhaps further. I'd liken this team currently to a piece of rotten wood with termites. From the outside it doesn't look that bad, but the inside is rotten and without a core. JS has a job at building it all up again from the inside, and not just putting a paint of gloss over it all with the odd good result like in the Kidney era.

Its best we lose heck, a lot of games in a row but get it all out of the way and start again with a new core as it has to happen eventually. For us to think we were going to win today was highly niave, this could be a big work in the making, but either way, its one that has to be done, and with the talent coming through at every province, you can't say the tools or talent isnt there to help us along.