It doesn't seem to be knocking Kieran's confidence like it used to though, when he was finally allowed on the pitch yesterday, he played as if the plan was to keep ball in hand, not the kick chase we see so often from Ireland. Doing that may well have been slightly against orders, but it proved that he is international standard, but just a different player to Murray. The biggest criticism he gets after playing for Ireland is about his box-kicking, not part of Kieran's natural game, but one of Connor's strengths, he didn't kick yesterday and has people talking about his crisp passing.
From the outside, it seems that Schmidt decides on a game plan, then looks at who to select, instead of looking at what the available players are best at, then developing a game plan. Alternatively, he doesn't believe that the players available to him are god enough to play a running game, so he's sticking with the kick-chase and tackle, tackle, tackle. There are always some nice, well choreographed plays off set piece, but that actually ties in with not believing in the player's ability, if you don't trust their skills and brains to play what's in front of them, give them as many practiced moves as possibly, that way the training will mitigate the deficiency in playing ability. I hope he's just stubborn about his chosen game-plan, if he doesn't believe the players are good enough for a higher skill level game/more autonomy and freedom to react as they see fit, there's no hope of a change.
