Simon Easterby has given an update on his future after being touted as a potential successor to Warren Gatland at Wales.
The 49-year-old is currently the head coach of Ireland, doing the job on an interim basis while Andy Farrell is on British and Irish Lions duty, but he has been linked to the vacant Welsh role.
Gatland departed as Wales’ head honcho after their Six Nations defeat to Italy in Round Two, with Matt Sherratt taking over on a short-term basis.
Sherratt has now returned to Cardiff and has stated that he does not want the job long-term, leaving the WRU to find someone else.
Easterby’s Welsh links
According to reports, Easterby and Glasgow Warriors boss Franco Smith are high up on the shortlist, but the former is happy at Ireland.
Although the ex-Scarlets star lives in Wales and is not far from the national team’s training base, he remains “committed” to the IRFU.
“I’m committed. When your name gets banded around, that’s all it is, it’s just speculation. If I’d been contacted I’d tell you, but I haven’t. So, that’s the way it is at the moment,” Easterby said.
“I love what I do. I’m very fortunate and it (the Wales job) might be 15 minutes up the road but I just feel very fortunate that I get the experiences I get to do this while Faz is away.
“I get to work with great people and how important that is. I’m pretty happy where I am.
“Obviously responsibility of certain areas of the game and then the bigger picture and all those other things, that’s part and parcel of being a head coach and I’ve loved it.
“I’m not saying it hasn’t been challenging – because it has – but I have great people to work with and great support around the group, and the public and you guys (the media) haven’t been too bad either!”
Easterby took over Ireland ahead of the 2025 Six Nations and guided them to a third-place finish following four victories in five.
They started impressively in their search for an unprecedented three-peat but suffered a dip towards the end of the competition following a heavy defeat to France and an unconvincing win over Italy.
Have Ireland peaked?
With the Irishmen also failing to find their best in the Autumn Nations Series, some have questioned whether the team has peaked, especially given that a lot of their key players are on the wrong side of 30, but Easterby disagrees.
The interim head coach has argued that it is simply about ‘evolving’ the squad so that they can return to the top of the game.
“That’s the challenge, that we are continually looking for those players to fill the void. There’s players retiring every year almost, although not every year do you lose three guys who’ve got well over 100 caps,” he added.
“That process has started and it’s a continuation of working with them in the provinces, how well they go in the provincial game in the latter end of the season now, looking forward to URC quarters, semis, Europe as well.
“The team is having to continually evolve. If you don’t, then you end up getting caught and bypassed by other teams. So it’s something that we will reflect on and look at the areas that we wanted to improve on or add to the group and then see if we’ve done that.
“Certainly sometimes we felt like that was the case and other times during the championship we felt like we probably haven’t quite mastered that yet.”
Src: Planetrugby.com - https://www.planetrugby.com/news/simon-easterby-addresses-future-after-challenging-six-nations-and-explains-why-ireland-havent-peaked
