It was Schmidt who described the squad’s confidence as “a bit broken” in the wake of their Italian trip and there was more straight talking after a bruising 68-minute session with the U20s at Queen’s University, with the head coach suggesting that his side has ‘gone into a shell’.

“It’s just probably more around building our confidence back, getting our cohesion back, being more accurate, which we weren’t in Italy. And, if we can do that, I think inevitably the direction of the team changes a little bit because they get more on front foot.

They get their confidence back and even I felt that we were maybe just a little bit conservative. We’d just gone into our shell a little bit in how we’re playing, just because everyone’s a little bit hesitant because they probably are starting to question themselves.

Schmidt lingered on the volume of personnel changes so far, many of them enforced and suffered early on in proceedings, but ultimately absolved them of guilt when it came to their stutters and there was a confidence that they can deliver their lines with more aplomb from here on in.

What we are witnessing is not some all-enveloping “malaise” that has invaded every corner of the operation, he insisted, pointing to some of the excellent work done in setting up tries for Quinn Roux and Keith Earls in the defeat of the Azzurri as evidence.

This was Schmidt the agenda setter.

The very fact that he was on media duties told its own story. As did his unprompted reference to last Sunday’s TV coverage of the Italy game on Virgin Media when Shane Horgan dared to reach for, the disastrous 2007 World Cup as context for current ailments.

“We’re still confident that we can work our way through this and deliver a couple of really good performances in the last two games of the Championship. You can only say in retrospect at the end of the Championship whether we achieved that or not.

“But at the moment that’s what we’re driven toward. We don’t get too distracted by people making comparisons with a team (from) 12 years ago, it couldn’t be more irrelevant to us because, for us, some of what we try to do is very much in the moment.

“It is for eight or 10 days’ time, it’s not looking 12 years back to see what we need to learn. We’ll learn a bit from what happened in Italy and then we’ll try to springboard from that into a really good performance against France.”

However, a fix remains elusive. Still, if that is an arduous task, it ranks as nothing compared to the puzzle presented to the game’s authorities in bringing about a calendar that suits all parties.

Plans for the 12-team World League were reported to be at an advanced stage this week and International Rugby Players, including president Jonathan Sexton, were quick to voice their opposition to the proposed blueprint.

Schmidt has joined that chorus of discontent voices, lamenting plans for a new competition which would add considerably to the load on players and evict a whole host of Tier Two nations from the top table for a period of 12 years.

The Ireland head coach hailed the contribution of the Pacific Islands to the game, stating that they had produced “some of the most entertaining players to have played the game” and he pointed to a Georgia side that has spent the week testing itself against England behind closed doors.

The added exertions on those players whose countries would be ushered in to the golden circle would make for no picnic either with teams asked to play a run of high-intensity test games on a weekly basis and across many time zones.

When Johnny, when Owen Farrell, when Kieran Read are all saying similar things, and even from slightly different perspectives, I think that World Rugby has to listen, don’t they?” said Schmidt after Ireland’s open training session in Belfast.

“Because World Rugby revolves around its prized assets and if you don’t look after your prized assets in any way, shape or form, in any sphere in life, then you are not going to be worth what you were before.

“I played in the amateur era but a lot of the values from the amateur era have been retained and, yes, there are commercial realities, yes, you are trying to compete on a global stage where there is a lot of competition but, if you want to speak globally, you can’t ring-fence 12 teams and say forever because 12 years is a long time for it to be exclusive.”