Joe Schmidt strikes a positive note ahead of South Africa tour

Joe Schmidt is the sort of guy who could take positives from an elephant stampede though a mud hut village. Then when things go well for Ireland, the oval world then springs into life and he begins to hint at new possibilities.

A championship that draws to a close with probably a third place drew renewed hope for Ireland’s tour to South Africa and for new faces to be part of that tour.

"There's maybe five new caps," said Schmidt. "A couple of them were making their Pro 12 debuts at this time last year – guys like Ultan Dillane and Josh van der Flier.

“They’d very little professional rugby experience, never mind Test rugby experience. To try to work with those guys has been incredibly invigorating.

"Same with a guy like Finlay Bealham and then at the same time CJ Stander made his Test debut and he made an impact almost straight away along with (Stuart) McCloskey who is learning fast, who is trying to grow his game to give more than just a carry game where he can make the deft offload

"He's learned to defend at Test match level when he's lined up against Jonathan Joseph, Jack Nowell, Mike Brown. It was a hell of a challenge for him as well."

For other players who have been injured and saw little or no action in the Six Nations, the hard edge of the coach emerged. Their disappointment at missing out will not be soothed by greater numbers chasing the shirt, even the high-profile names from the World Cup.

"Hopefully they will be looking over their shoulder," said Schmidt. "Iain Henderson is going to look at the six or the lock position and say I'd better roll my sleeves up and get working. We'd love that to be the case with guys like Seán O'Brien coming back, Tommy Bowe coming back, Luke Fitz . . . there are lots of guys. Chris Henry, Quinn Roux, Matt Healy. They were all in camp."

The match itself was satisfying and while Ireland may be more critical for not surging ahead even more than they did when they had so much first-half possession, criticism of the performance would be churlish.

Scotland looked at their indiscipline as the main enemy and that’s their prerogative. Schmidt saw a pleasing performance from his team.

“Always happy to finish on a winning note,” said the Irish coach. “We knew how good Scotland were going to be and how combative they were going to be and they didn’t disappoint us.

“Full credit to the players I don’t think they disappointed themselves. They went out and controlled long periods of the game to build pressure and to build a score.”

Captain Rory Best saw little in the sequence of scuffles towards the end of the match. The Irish hooker expected a testy response from Scotland, who are under more pressure than Ireland to turn over results after more than a decade of rugby poverty.

“I think it was just a proper Test match,” said Best in defensive mode. “It was ferocious. We were asked yesterday what was the motivation would be. You see two teams that really want to win.

“Sometimes it spills over a little bit. It didn’t get out of hand. It was just two teams that wanted to win and two teams that were highly motivated to win and wanted to win for their country. There wasn’t really anything in it.”

Third in the championship, however, doesn’t cut ice anymore. Ending on a high point is all well and good but not totally so.

"We expect to win every game," added Best. "That was the standard set over the last two years. Take the Six Nations as a whole we'd be disappointed. Probably the most disappointing was the France game. We let that game slip and let it out of our control. We didn't keep attacking them."

The Ulsterman then sang off the same hymn sheet as the coach sitting beside him and flagged the future that at least promises a competitive Irish camp.

“It was about making sure we finished this tournament well,” said Best. “Maybe we haven’t made enough of our luck at the start of it. The most pleasing thing is that when we were under pressure against England we stepped up.

“There have been a lot of guys without even . . . not a lot of experience but no experience,” he added. “They have now come in and over the first three games realised that to play Test rugby you can prepare during the week but to win you’ve got to be really good and minimise your errors. We now have a good pool of player who know how to win at Test level.”