Andy Farrell has insisted he is happy being an assistant to Joe Schmidt, despite appearing to get an endorsement to succeed his boss as Ireland head coach should the main man depart after next year’s World Cup.
Defence coach Farrell and his former England head coach Stuart Lancaster, now senior coach at Leinster, were both linked as successors to Schmidt, who has promised to deliver his decision by the end of this month on whether he will continue as Ireland boss after the 2019 World Cup.
Andy Farrell with head coach Joe Schmidt. Picture: Inpho
IRFU chief executive Philip Browne was quoted in newspapers on Tuesday morning as saying both Englishman were capable of taking over from the Grand Slam-winning coach should he decide to return home to his native New Zealand at the end of his contract 12 months from now.
Speaking ahead of Ireland’s Guinness Series showdown with the All Blacks in Dublin on Saturday, Farrell was asked for his thoughts on his employer’s comments
“Thank you very much,” he replied. “Look, that type of thing, you won’t expect me to answer that today in the week that we’ve got.
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“What I would say on that is that I have a fantastic job, I really enjoy myself working under Joe, learning. Joe will make his decision in time, I’ll keep enjoying myself and hopefully keep getting better.”
The week that Farrell has pits number-two ranked Ireland against the best side in the world at a sold-out Aviva Stadium this weekend and the defence coach agreed that with the back-to-back World Cup winners in town, the sense of occasion was easily felt within the Irish camp.
“You certainly can. You would expect it to be like that come New Zealand week. They’re the best team in the world for a reason and we get excited, we want to play against them as much as we possibly can.
“Why? Because we want to test ourselves and we want to keep on improving and pushing up the ladder. If we could play them every week it would be good for us because it would be good for our development.”
Farrell has been on the winning coaching ticket each time a Northern Hemisphere side has beaten the All Blacks since 2011, as defence coach with England in 2012, Ireland in 2016 and the British & Irish Lions in 2017.
Asked what the secret to success was, he replied: “There is no secret. I’ve lost against them a lot more than I’ve won as well.
“We have to take our learnings from that and make sure when things go against us or the run of play goes against it, we get back on point as soon as we possibly can on both sides of the ball.”
As regards to gaining confidence from those victories, Farrell recollected the rematch with the All Blacks in Dublin a fortnight after Ireland had beaten them for the first time in 111 years in Chicago in November 2016.
“Two weeks later we got beat so we take our learnings from that game and how the week felt. How we build during the week but we also take the learnings from the loss.
“We’ve got our eyes wide open after the second game in 2016, they came to the Aviva with their tails between their legs and they really took the game to us. It was a physical encounter and they thoroughly deserved the points on the day. We take the learnings from both of those and see what we come up with two years later.”
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The Ireland assistant reported a return to training for first-choice full-back Rob Kearney, who suffered a shoulder injury at the end of October, centre Garry Ringrose, who picked up a bang in the win over Italy two weeks ago and scrum-half Kieran Marmion, who rolled an ankle in last Saturday’s 28-17 win over Argentina.
“All trained, all trained. Full session and obviously we’ll take stock of that over the next 24 hours but on the right track.
“Everyone took the field and some of the lads are progressing well.”
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
