As problems go, Joe Schmidt’s are not the type to make your heart bleed.
Coming off the back of last week’s historic win over the All Blacks, the Ireland head coach made no less than 15 changes to his team for the visit of Canada.
Despite eight debutants among a scratch outfit that had never played together, the 18th best team in the world were given a 52-21 hiding.
It was far from perfect – some pretty sloppy defence and sloppier discipline contributing to the concession of three tries. But the return to green of Peter O’Mahony and Sean O’Brien, coupled with strong performances from Keith Earls. Tiernan O’Halloran and Finlay Bealham leave the Kiwi in something of a conundrum.
Jordi Murphy’s injury means their is a vacancy in the team that beat New Zealand, with Josh van der Flier the most likely candidate after his superb shift in Soldier Field. Outside of that one enforced change, did anyone do enough to force their way into his plans?
Do you stick with the XV who made history in Chicago, or mix things up and throw a curve ball at the world champions – who geared up for revenge with a 68-10 shellacking of Conor O’Shea’s Italy?
Dillane’s try-scoring man-of-match display in the second row may have caught the eye of all and sundry, but it was the other two lines of the pack, plus the back three, where Schmidt sees the most competition this week.
“You get a gut feel post game and I think I have quite a lot of tough decisions to make. Then you try to crystallise those decisions with a really intensive look back and then you get back together with the other coaches. They will put in their opinion and they will give their best 15, 23,” said Schmidt of his selection process.
“It is tough, I think back-row, back three, even the front-row is a tough decision. I think, we’ll get together and sort those out. Announce the squad next Thursday and that will be really closely looked at and hopefully that will be the squad to give the All Blacks a really good game.”
Joe Schmidt admits he has some tough decisions to make ahead of All Blacks rematch #irevcan pic.twitter.com/kvc7NRIlGb
— SportsJOE.ie (@SportsJOEdotie) November 12, 2016
