Schmidt rings in changes for Romania tie

“It might have been when his knee hit the ground”.

Henshaw, Sexton and Henderson are not included but coach Joe Schmidt says they are fit…

Ireland’s ultimate fate in the group, however, will be decided in their final two games against Italy and France, with next Sunday’s clash against the Azzurri providing an early opportunity to wrap up a spot in the quarter-finals.

But whether the performance was clinical enough to cause Joe Schmidt to deviate from the front-line side, which started in the opening win over Canada, must be open to doubt.

The last meeting between the nations was an autumn worldwide at Lansdowne Road in 2005, with Ireland running out 43-12 winners.

It is not just politeness that prevents the Irish from playing down their obvious superiority over Romania – ranked 17th in the world and worth it – at Wembley on Sunday afternoon.

As expected, only the indefatigable and durable Jamie Heaslip, Keith Earls and a little more surprisingly, Jared Payne, have been retained in the Irish starting line-up from their eight-day turnaround, while Ian Madigan has been preferred to Paddy Jackson at outhalf amid the possibility Madigan might also do some of the endgame at scrum-half.

“As in any match we would be managing players in and out of training, so some guys who may have trained yesterday may have sat out today”.

Replacements: Jackson for Bowe (56), R. Kearney for Earls (50), McGrath for Healy (54), Cronin for Strauss (60), Furlong for White (64), O’Connell for Ryan (64), O’Brien for Heaslip (60), Murray for R. Kearney (72).

The physical effort required against both Romania and Italy won’t be insignificant though and this is where the backroom team will really earn their corn – Jason Cowman may not be a household name, but as the squad’s strength and conditioning coach he is every bit as important to the project as the players.

Replacements: Mihaita Lazar, Otar Turashvili, Alexandru Tarus, Johannes van Heerden, Stelian Burcea, Florin Surugiu, Florin Ionita, Florin Vlaicu.

“For us it starts in earnest now, because we know we can qualify if we win next weekend”.

The Irish camp believe the Romanians are much more competitive than Canada, not least in the way they contested the French lineout and scrum, and at the breakdown.

Kiss said Romania had made changes to their line-up, which would be tested at the start of the match.

Toner does what Toner does… and Romania couldn’t handle it. Whether his particular brand of second row play is what Schmidt ideally wants remains to be seen. “We did that against Scotland and some of the chat this week was if we can try and approach this game with a similar sort of mind set in attack then we would get a few more tries”, he said.

Thankfully, Ireland’s first brush with the game’s second tier left no major scars on the squad and the signs were mostly encouraging.