24/09/2013 – 09:24:19Back to Sport Home
New Ireland rugby head coach Joe Schmidt has enjoyed getting settled into his new role and is relishing his first set of test games this autumn. Schmidt, who coached Leinster to two Heineken Cup wins, an Amlin Challenge Cup win and a Rabo Pro 12 win, took over from Declan Kidney before the summer trip to the US and Canada. It’s a first international role for him as his coaching experience has come with Bay of Plenty, Auckland Blues, Clermont and Leinster. He took training for the first time today as a group of 42 gathered at Carton House, Maynooth. Schmidt says “This is a really positive environment and that is created by the players, it’s a willing bunch and I think that sprinkling of youth is a great reminder to the experienced lads that they need to be on their metal.� 42 is certainly the biggest squad call up in recent memory from under Declan Kidney or Eddie O’Sullivan. Perhaps it’s a case of the coach wanting to see as many people as possible, and closer to the time he will wind it down for the Guinness Series. Schmidt says “We are incredibly open minded about selection, we just want the best group to get together for the November series and we struggled to prune the squad back – I’ve made a few phone calls to a couple of guys to say here are a couple of aspects that we want you to keep working away on and you not being included in this camp won’t mean you won’t be involved in November.� Inevitably today the topic of who would lead Ireland in the November internationals and possibly further came up. Where before you would have had only a few players to look to there are now even more like Peter O’Mahony, Rory Best, Jamie Heaslip has already been a captain as has Paul O’Connell and Brian O’Driscoll. The Irish coach said “We haven’t even discussed that yet and that’s because at the moment John (Plumtree, assistant coach) is only recently in and we have talked about what each of the players bring and the strengths and weaknesses of some of the players� He added “We needed to get to games and have a look at players to be able to watch an individual player for 20 minutes to see him working away from the ball and to see him positioning himself and seeing them do other things that you don’t get to see on coverage.�
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-union/22734865
Schmidt keeps options open for Ireland
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