O'Sullivan does not fix what's not broken

RUGBY/Six Nations:As selection meetings go, Eddie O'Sullivan and co wouldn't have had time to burn a match, much less the midnight oil, given the starting XV had emerged unscathed and been well rested after perhaps the most complete all-round performance of O'Sullivan's reign and in the most memorable of pressure-cooker occasions. "Same again? Okay. Pass the sugar," was probably the gist of it.

Time was when the assembled media would feverishly scribble down the names of one of O'Sullivan's rapid-fire announcements, but yesterday the majority saved on the ink. Even the one injury-enforced alteration to the bench, Eoin Reddan of Wasps called in for the injured Isaac Boss, had been well flagged.

"Let's say it wasn't difficult," admitted the Irish coach. "Everyone is in good health at the moment, and I think the last performance against England was very good, so I didn't see any compelling reason for changing it."

For the same team to scale the same emotional heights and reproduce the all-round quality of the performance against England away from home in Murrayfield will take some doing, which O'Sullivan readily admitted.

"The important thing is to get a result. If we could play better than we did against England it would be great, but it would be more important that we win the game. But we do know that if we get our performance levels right we tend to come out the right side most of the time. It's easier to do it at home, and Murrayfield has been a bit of a graveyard, so it's a game to go into being very aware of what's going to happen."

Scotland will hardly gift-wrap 21 points, with ribbons on them, as they did against Italy, and may revert to the more constrained game of last season rather than seek to go over or around Ireland, as they attempted to do against Italy's rush defence.

Asked how Scotland might approach this game, O'Sullivan intimated that comments by the Scottish forwards' coach George Graham may well have helped.

"I wasn't sure until this morning actually and I saw that their forwards coach, George Graham, said that this was the best Scottish pack in many a year," he said. "So I suspect that would mean they are going to beat us up, up front, that will probably be the gameplan, take us on up front, give our pack a good battering and see what happens from there."

If not quite on the scale of Gareth Jenkins' pre-match assertion that Wales were going to target the Irish scrum, Graham's comments should still be grist to the mill, especially to the half-dozen Munstermen in the pack.

Regarding the carrot of winning a third Triple Crown in four years, O'Sullivan commented: "I suppose if you win too many Triple Crowns people will write them off, but we went a long time when we would have bought the lid of it. It's the next goal we can achieve now and I think it's still worth achieving, and you stay in the championship."

That said, he conceded France were favourites to beat England in Twickenham on Sunday.

Boss, who played so gutsily in Stringer's absence against France and underlined his pace with the intercept try which applied a joyous coup de grace to England, is unlucky to have picked up an injury to his AC joint, and is a doubt even for the final game in Rome on Saturday week.

Still, Reddan was Stringer's understudy last season - albeit earning just a couple of minutes on the wing in Paris for his only cap. And, to a degree, Boss owed his elevation to the tour to New Zealand and Australia, and thus this season, to Reddan undergoing a groin operation.

In terms of the dynamic Reddan brings to the Irish mix, he is somewhere between Stringer and Boss, though arguably closer to Stringer.

But, as Reddan's chip-and-chase try for Wasps at the weekdown demonstrated, there is more to his game. "For the type of game Wasps want to play, he's become a key player for them in terms of managing their pack. He passes, he kicks, he runs, he keeps changing the landscape for the defence, so in that respect he's a very smart footballer.

"The move to Wasps has done him a lot of good, and he's playing in an environment where he has to make those decisions all the time, and I think he's benefited greatly from that," said the Irish coach, which could be interpreted as a compliment to his predecessor Warren Gatland, given he lured Reddan from Munster, where he was third-choice, to Wasps prior to leaving the then Premiership champions. Well, it could be.

Brian O'Driscoll will equal Keith Wood's record of captaining Ireland for a 36th time, and earn his 73rd cap, as will Girvan Dempsey, which will leave the pair behind only Malcolm O'Kelly (83) and Stringer, who will be earning his 75th. O'Sullivan spoke glowingly of Dempsey's consistency and reading of the game ("he never lets a ball bounce in front of him") and described the fullback as a consummate professional whose performance against England was "magnificent".

Likening the fullback to a goalkeeper, O'Sullivan highlighted Dempsey's dependability and how much that comforts his teammates. Dempsey's video analysis of the opposition, especially of the outhalves' tactical kicking, is apparently exceptional.

"A telling thing for me with Girvan is that he spends as much time analysing the opposition whether he's sitting on the bench or starting. That's a measure of Girvan's professionalism, and to top it off he's a nice fella as well, which is not a bad thing either."

Looking ahead to the World Cup, O'Sullivan intimated he may be inclined to excuse some of his frontliners from duty on the two-Test summer tour to Argentina.

As the French defeat, without Stringer and O'Driscoll, underlined, Ireland have a good team but has yet to develop a 30-man squad with true depth - as will be required if Ireland are to go where no Irish team has gone before in a World Cup, ie, beyond the quarter-finals.

O'Sullivan accepted as much. "There are places up for grabs for the World Cup and I think Argentina will play a part in that. But I still feel to go out and try and win every game in the Six Nations is the right thing to do."

Accepting that Bernard Laporte had managed to achieve more of a twin approach, O'Sullivan maintained: "I don't think that's a scenario that works as well for us."

Ireland v Scotland

15 Girvan Dempsey (Leinster)

14 Shane Horgan (Leinster)

13 Brian O'Driscoll (Leinster capt)

12 Gordon D'arcy (Leinster)

11 Denis Hickie (Leinster)

10 Ronan O'Gara (Munster)

9 Peter Stringer (Munster)

1 Marcus Horan (Munster)

2 Rory Best (Ulster)

3 John Hayes (Munster)

4 Donncha O'Callaghan (Munster)

5 Paul O'Connell (Munster)

6 Simon Easterby (Llanelli)

7 David Wallace (Munster)

8 Denis Leamy (Munster)

Replacements:S Best (Ulster), J Flannery (Munster), M O'Driscoll (Munster), N Best (Ulster), E Reddan (Wasps), P Wallace (Ulster), A Trimble (Ulster)