Joe Schmidt excited about Ireland's tour of South Africa

Ireland head coach Joe Schmidt stated that his side is excited about the upcoming three-Test tour of South Africa despite missing out on key players.

Seán O’Brien, Tommy O’Donnell, Josh van der Flier, Luke Fitzgerald, Rob Kearney, Dave Kearney along with their star fly-half Johnny Sexton are unavailable for selection either due to personal reasons or injuries.

Connacht pair Tiernan O'Halloran and Matt Healy were added to the squad as replacements along with Craig Gilroy and Ian Madigan.

Schmidt played down concerns of increasing overload taking a toll on the players as he believes they played fewer games in this season than the previous one, especially with the early exit of Irish based teams from the Champions Cup.

The 50-year-old also admitted that he is excited to see the younger players on show citing the examples of O'Halloran and Healy.

"From my perspective, our game minutes are down this year so our players have actually played a little bit less this year compared to last year," he said.

"It's a World Cup year - any year post-World Cup, I agree, that season is long.

"By the time you take the pre-season, the four warm-up Test matches, and as soon as you're playing matches at a high level, they're more attritional mentally as well as physically because you've got to really extend yourself because you know your opponent is at a very high level.

"From that perspective, it is tough. From the coaches perspective, we're incredibly excited about the opportunity this gives us.

"If there are guys missing, I'm going to know more about Tiernan O'Halloran, more about Matt Healy in a week-to-week environment.

"I've been down to Connacht. I've seen them train. I've certainly seen them play a lot of times.

"But you get to know a player more and you see him slot in and you say, 'there's the level, here it is now, how will he go? Gee, you're coping really well'.

"That's another stride you can take, so this is a really good opportunity for us.

"One of the things a lot of people reference is the depth of our playing pool. I think this is a really good opportunity to extend that depth and find out more about players.

"What better time to do it when you've got time to build on those players you see showing you promise.

"It is an attritional year because of its longevity. It hasn't been as much because of the actual game time that players have played but there is a volume in training that does take its toll."

Ireland have a dismal record in South Africa after losing all the seven games previously against the Springboks and their overall win percentage against Allister Coetzee's men is just 25.

Coetzee has announced a new-look Springboks squad for the series with as many as nine uncapped players after nearly 26 players overall were ruled out with injuries or personal reasons or their commitments with Sevens team.

However, Schmidt is expecting a tough series considering the depth in the squad South Africa possess.

"I think some of the media comment is that they are going to be a little bit more expansive," he said.

"I thought Heyneke Meyer had them mixing their game up a little bit anyway. I don't expect anything massively different, there is a number of the same personnel there.

"Anywhere they're inexperienced they've got great talent and where they are experienced they've got great talent. That's part of what is the excitement and the challenge."