It was not a vintage display and many fans would have preferred to have seen a more convincing display to bounce back from defeat to Japan.
But, while his players might not have shown enough to have people believe they could beat South Africa or New Zealand in a quarter-final, Schmidt was unperturbed, reckoning that stand-alone game would look after itself.
Schmidt said: “I do think we’ve got to take it one game at a time, particularly having lost last week.
“So we will set our sights on Samoa because we need to win there to have a chance of qualifying and if we get a win with a little bit more we know we’re in a quarter-final. We control that ourselves.
“And in the end, when you get to a quarter-final everything hinges on the quarter-final itself. It becomes very much a one-off game.
“One thing I learned from last time at the World Cup Is that you can be on an upswing but if you’ve got injuries or you’ve got a little bit of a confidence hit because you’ve got a number of new guys in…
“We made 11 changes today and we got the performance that we needed and people will maybe have expected more of the performance but when you look at the stats I am really happy with the performance and the outcome that we got.
“Yes, there were a number of errors but we created a number of pressure points that we’d be pretty happy with.
“There were more things that pleased me, definitely. We started well again, we got those two early tries as we did last time. Then, we made a bit of hard work of it.
“I think one of the plans we had for this evening was to get a few scores early, because speaking to the guys who played here for the last two times, the longer the game goes the more moisture there is in the air, on the ground, on the ball and on the players themselves.
“So, we knew it was going to get more and more difficult as time went on. That was probably a bit of consternation in that third quarter when we didn’t get the bonus point try.
“But thankfully it was great to see Andrew Conway streak away and get that try and then to finish with the best try of the night at the end, just to get that 35 point differential and to keep a clean sheet is always great, the Russians have certainly have got a bit to offer.”
Ireland struggled in the first 20 minutes of the second half but Schmidt was willing to make allowances given the conditions.
He said: “I don’t think we lost our way, I just think we didn’t convert some chances and when you look back there were some really good chances.
“At the same time I’m pretty realistic about how tough conditions were out there having talked to the players afterwards and I felt that we controlled a good amount of the game, albeit not necessarily scoring in behind that.
“I think, watching the games that have been played here previously, I think England maybe got five tries against Tonga and were made to work pretty hard to get the bonus point as well.
“So, I don’t think it will cause too much frustration. In this tournament, you get what you need from each game as much as you possibly can.
“We’ve got 11 points from the pool, we still keep control of whatever outcome we get at the end of the pool and we’ve got to aim up at Samoa now and make sure that we put in a performance.
“If we get a win there, then we know we’re in the mix.
“If we get a win, and anything else, then we know we’ve qualified. We just need to wait for that final pool game between Japan and Scotland to find out where we fall in the pool.”
Ireland have a nine-day wait before they play Samoa in Fukuoaka and Schmidt is hoping conditions will be more favourable by then.
He said: “I think we are adjusting to the conditions. I have heard that it does start to cool off in October, it’s October now so I’m hopeful the conditions will start to change a little but now and we won’t have to adjust as much to them.
“So we’ll find out in nine days’ time. I spent a fair bit of time in my younger years in Samoa and they get very high humidity there, so they may well be a little bit better at adjusting in nine days’ time unless we get a little bit of a drop in the temperature.”
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