From friends to foes.
It has taken Vern Cotter a little time to get his Scottish team up to speed but they finally look like a group that can bring the Kiwi a little satisfaction against his former assistant.
Cotter and Joe Schmidt were the dynamic duo at Clermont before the latter upped sticks for Dublin and three trophy-stacked seasons at Leinster.
The New Zealanders faced off against each other six times in the then Heineken Cup – sharing the spoils with three wins each – but Schmidt has somewhat overshadowed Cotter in the Test arena, hammering Cotter’s Scots in Murrayfield on the last day of last year’s Championship to seal back-to-back titles for Ireland.
This Saturday however their meeting in the Aviva is a battle for mid-table superiority, with the Scots looking a far more formidable foe after Sunday’s 29-18 defeat of France in Edinburgh.
Ireland looked good against Italy on Saturday, running in nine tries against the paper-thin Azzurri challenge, but their biggest advantage may be the extra day’s rest. Schmidt is expecting to hear as much from his friend and foe sometime this week.
“No doubt he’ll give me a ring and plead poverty and say it’s a tough turnaround,” said Schmidt on Saturday. “I’ll plead poverty to him too talking about injuries.”
Cotter was already getting his message across yesterday in the wake of a victory that handed the Six Nations title to Eddie Jones’ England – who can complete the Grand Slam with a win in Paris next week.
“Ireland do have an advantage in that they have a day more than us to recover, a day more than us to prepare,” he said.
“So we’ll take it as it comes, the first priority is to recover. It was a physical game out there so we’ll see how we front up tomorrow and see what we do – we might only be able to train one day.”
Schmidt may be able to empathise following Ireland’s six-day turnaround between the round one draw with Wales and defeat to France, which saw Dave Kearney, Sean O’Brien and Mike McCarthy suffer significant injuries in Stade de France.
