In what was a fairly meh interview on tonight's Late Late Show, Joe Schmidt explained to Ryan Tubridy just how disastrous Jonny Sexton's injury re-occurrence before the Argentina quarter-final was for the team.
When asked for his biggest regret from the tournament, he said he wished they hadn't had so many injuries before going to talk about the blow losing Sexton so close to the match was for both the side, and with regard to the amount of time Ian Madigan had to prepare.
For Ian Madigan to come in. He had a small window on the Saturday, of about a 25 minutes, to prepare himself for a monumental task. That's not a great window to then be running the show.
Surely they must have known Sexton would be a doubt but it seems not.
wjoe by swflb