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Schmidt's surprise new reason for Devin Toner's RWC omission emerges, but does it make sense?
By Ian Cameron
A surprising reason for Devin Toner's controversial Rugby World Cup omission has been revealed in Joe Schmidt's new autobiography.
'Ordinary Joe' was released today and there's plenty of interesting nuggets of information for Irish rugby fans to mull over.
According to The Irish Times, Schmidt elaborates on the omission of 6'10 Leinster lock Toner from the Ireland's Rugby World Cup squad for Japan.
The snubbing of the giant Meath man was the standout call in Schmidt's RWC squad and angered many Irish fans who felt uncapped South African Jean Kleyn was not deserving of the place of the Irish stalwart.
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The reason - however - was not a straight forward selection decision - at least according to Schmidt. Schmidt now says he feared that Toner was facing a potential six-week ban for a high tackle in an Ireland warm-up game.
The New Zealander writes: "We hadn’t noticed the incident at the time, but we reviewed the incident and it didn’t look good.
“We had been warned by Alain Rolland, in his presentation to us, that any shoulder-to-head contact was likely to have a starting entry point of a six-week suspension.
"It was a difficult call, but we decided to go with Tadhg Beirne, who can play both secondrow and backrow, and Jean Kleyn, the only specialist tighthead-scrummaging secondrow in the squad.”
His explanation however jars with the fact that Ireland named their World Cup Squad on September 2nd, six days earlier than the official deadline. If Toner was to be sanctioned, it would likely have happened before the deadline date.
Could Schmidt not have waited another six days and then select Toner?
Schmidt previously said the decision was an extremely difficult one.
“I’ve coached Dev for ten years, and he’s not just a lineout champion for us,” said Schmidt, speaking in a video realised by the IRFU shortly after the squad announcement. "He’s such a good player, but he’s an absolutely quality person. That was an incredibly tough conversation yesterday.
“Jean Kleyn, we probably don’t have a specialist tighthead second row, as such. And again, at the start I said about the balance we’re looking for across that squad of 31. So Jean Kleyn fitted that.
“Tadhg Beirne gives you the versatility of both the second row, and he’s teamed up with Jean Kleyn really well in Munster this year. But he also gives you the threat over the ball like a 6 or 7 would, and can play in the back row.”
His omission even prompted World Rugby's Augustin Pichot to Tweet: "If I was Devin Toner ..... I will be asking WR for answers. I feel sorry for him; nothing against for who was properly selected for the RWC19 by the way. But feel that way."
Schmidt hit back by saying: "Considering he is involved in World Rugby, he could have a look at what the rules were and not have so many things to say because for us it is tough enough to do our job and tough enough for me to have a conversation as I did with Devin.
“With Ireland, the qualification involvement is I don’t know probably six or seven per cent. The rest are homegrown guys who are not only homegrown but who are domiciled here apart from two years when Johnny (Sexton) was used from Paris. If there was any question about the number of Irish people involved then I would be surprised when you match up those numbers.”
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Latest Comments
They would improve a lot of such a scheme were allowed though JD, win win :p
Go to commentsI rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.
He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.
The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).
The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.
The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).
It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.
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