This is huge. With England going for a Grand Slam I'm really looking forward to playing against them. On their day they're so hot, like at Twickenham last year when they played really fast tempo rugby and ran amok a bit. They're strong in a lot of areas.
Hopefully Johnson being out will help us. Having been captained by him, I now realise he's a huge influence. I had wondered beforehand but he's definitely as good, and even better than all the hype. It's just his presence. He doesn't have to say an awful lot. He's still a great player and a really good leader, like Lawrence (Dallaglio). They're two big losses for them, though Martin Corry and Simon Shaw are seriously good players also.
But it would need us to have a really big performance and for them to underachieve a little bit, because that's how good they are. If we perform well, that's all we can do. And if they play really well it's going to be hard to beat them, but we're on for a great contest.
Rewind to life after the Lions
Me and a few pals went up the Australian coast to the Whitsunday Islands for five days. After that we went up to Magnetic Island, where you could only stay in hostels, that was great craic. Met my sister there and bumped in to Mal (O'Kelly).
After 11 or 12 days in Australia we had 10 days in Fiji. First we stopped off in a luxurious resort and chilled out completely, then met up with seven of Suzanne's mates on one of the Fijian islands, Beachcomber Island, which is reknowned for being a big party island. We had a really good laugh there for five or six nights.
After the most intense few months I'd ever known I really needed to unwind. I was finally able to use the camcorder NTL gave me on the tour, during which I never used it at all. But on the holidays it came out in force. The day after I returned I was back training, on Monday August 13th.
The Celtic League
I came in for the Ebbw Vale game and they were well beaten by the time I came on. The following week against Ulster we ground out a good win, and scored four tries. I popped a couple of ribs and so I had to pull out of the Bridgend game. Played against Pontypridd, we played well, beat them well in the end and I got a couple of tries. The backs had been giving me a bit of abuse "you haven't got on the scoresheet yet Briano". Shaggy (Shane Horgan) had given me abuse and he'd only scored once, so having leapfrogged him he got some back. But that was September 11th and it felt so pointless playing. It really did. Brian O'Meara didn't know that his sister, who works in the vicinity of the World Trade Centre, was alright until half an hour before we met. He was up in the air for the whole game.
Scotland 32 Ireland 10
Everything went wrong. It's still hard to put your finger on it. I don't like to use the word complacent, but I don't think we realised how big the challenge was going to be. We thought we'd be able to pick up where we left off against France, but you can't do that.
A lot of players were disappointed with their individual performances, which means the team played poorly and the Scots played really well. All those things together made for a day off.
But if someone plays a really good game once does that mean they're a brilliant player? No. You have to do it again and again. So if someone has a shocker once, does that mean they're a bad player? No. Everyone's entitled to a good or a bad day, and we just had a "mare".
What was disappointing was that good teams even on a bad day are still in the hunt. But we didn't compete, we were humiliated. No matter what we tried we couldn't break them down, and frustration leads to errors because you're pushing it.
Far more disappointing than my knock-on which cost us a try, when the ball bounced up against my face, was the time Leslie ran through for the first try. That was my fault. I didn't realise he was my man.
The European Cup
It was nice coming back into a confident, winning environment. We were looking forward to having a go at Toulouse over there, because they'd lost a couple of games and had a few injuries, but the explosion in Toulouse meant the game was moved to Donnybrook. We played well in the first-half, let them have a sniff and then finished them off in the last quarter. A 40-10 scoreline was a bit flattering but putting 40 points on Toulouse is very satisfying.
The following week we were in Newcastle. I hadn't played against Jonny Wilkinson and Tuigamala, and there was a lot of hype in England about the Newcastle backs and how exciting they are. So that put it up to us.
Some games you're just really interested in. That's how it is, the way you wake up some days and you feel better than others, and that must have been one of those games. I swan-dived for the last try just to outdo 'Darce' (Gordon D'Arcy) because he'd given a big swan-dive the week before. And I thought 'that's so Darce". I had plenty of time to think about it. It's not usually me, and afterwards "Darce" said he should be entitled to royalties on the dive.
Leinster haven't really played a full 80 minutes yet and we haven't been really down to the wire in the last five minutes - that will test our resolve. In the words of Matt Williams we're not popping any champagne corks yet.
Wales 6 Ireland 36
There was a lot of pressure on everyone to perform. We trained hard during the week. I felt very confident we were going to go out and have a good performance.
Going in 15-3 at half-time I was still disappointed. It should have been 23-3 at least. I felt we needed to score with all that pressure just before half-time. But our defence was strong at the start of the second-half, then we got hold of the game again, relaxed a bit, played percentages, and the scores came.
I was pleased with my own game. There was a lot of dirty work to be done. There were no 30-metre runs, but I got through a tackle and offloaded to Shaggy a few times. That's satisfying enough for me, when you don't have space and you still do your basics okay.
We're bang in the middle of a nine-week period of continuous internationals and European Cup matches. I'm sure we'll really feel it tomorrow. Two internationals in a row is hard going. You never feel as fresh as a daisy after an international and I've never been as tired as I was after the Welsh game. I was absolutely flogged.
People didn't realise that the ground was sticky. I had the 21 millimetre studs in. The heat in the stadium was so severe people said they were sticky in the stand, so imagine what it was like running around on the pitch. And scrums? God help them.
In an interview with Gerry Thornley.
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