Form flows from return to the basics

As the clouds hung over Lansdowne Road last Saturday week, there didn't seem too many silver linings about. But on mature recollection, there was the discernible sign of a real return to form by Conor McGuinness.

Credit for much of the resistance in the final half hour against France must go to the tactical leadership shown by McGuinness. Utilising the wind to good effect, he launched box-kick after boxkick up Ireland's right-hand touchline. They were sometimes under-cooked and boomeranged a bit, but they were never overcooked. They limited the number of attacking throw-ins to the French, forced them to earn possession, and with Justin Bishop and Eric Miller leading the chase, gave his team-mates a ready target.

Coupled with a trademark sniping break up the narrow side, the pick of a typically industrious display around the fringes was an all-enveloping hit on Thomas Castaignede as the impish French out-half threatened to cut loose in the first half.

Even within the Irish squad, McGuinness's performance was thought of as a timely return to form. The player maintains it came sooner. "The South African match is the one I would have picked as the match where you could say I returned to form.

"Number one I felt more comfortable," he explains. "I'm much happier with the basics of my game now. What happened to me last season was that although I was working twice a day, I wasn't getting any skills sessions in. What I found was that when you turn full-time, with all the weights and everything else, you don't practise your kicking or your passing enough. If I get my kicking and my passing right, then everything else follows."

Weights are great and squad sessions ain't so bad, but there's no substitute for the nuts and bolts. To that end, since October McGuinness has worked on ball work for two sessions a week, along with Ciaran Scally and Derek Hegarty.

"I wouldn't say I had been playing shocking, but I am more comfortable in the way I'm playing now," he says.

There were other mitigating factors. A troublesome toe infection which required cortisone injections, and at one stage had him on crutches in between games, became almost unbearable by the time of the South African tour. Eventually, an off-season operation was required, resulting in a delayed start to this season.

After a pretty hectic year, McGuinness's form never quite scaled the heights of his performance in Paris last March when his Connacht mentor, Warren Gatland, recalled him to the Irish team.

A populist theory for such a relative decline or stagnation is the so-called Second Season Syndrome.

Again, politely, McGuinness puts a slightly different spin on it.

"I kind of refer to it in my own mind as the honeymoon period. Then, after the honeymoon, you've got to live up to what happened in the first year and I also think opponents are looking out for you.

"To be honest with you, it still doesn't mean you can't deal with it, you've just got to get cuter and I think I'm beginning to get cuter now. I must admit I feel a lot more comfortable about what exactly I should do in different positions on the park."

So much so that during the pre-match walkabout before the French game, McGuinness was working out the options for the different areas of the pitch. This greater emphasis on pre-match preparation is, he feels, a spin-off of inheriting the captaincy at St Mary's this season. "I had to start thinking more about what the team was going to do here or there," he says.

When news filtered through to South Africa during the summer that McGuinness was to become St Mary's captain, the thought occurred that the timing was premature. In short, he needed club captaincy like he needed a hole in the head.

"A lot of people did think that, but I've captained a lot of sides all the way up and the good thing about the club side is that there's a core of guys there who I've captained or played with before. That helps hugely."

McGuinness also makes the point that normally one of the most difficult aspects of marrying international and club games at this time of the year is the psychological fall-off players experience when returning to their club every other week. Having the captaincy responsibilities keeps him on his toes.

According to team-mates, McGuinness is a very good thinker and talker on the pitch, particularly good for his forwards. Indeed, it was encouraging to see McGuinness guide 14-man St Mary's to a hugely important make-or-break win over Shannon last week. Rarely has he celebrated so animatedly as he did at the full-time whistle, and the popular consensus was that it had been his most commanding club performance of the season.

Putting his arm around Trevor Brennan as his team-mate was sent-off was one of his more thankless tasks of the day, but McGuinness stands by his man. "I don't see as captain Trevor being an extra burden in any way. Aside from anything else, he's a leader in the pack and gets guys up for a match like nobody else can. Trevor's discipline is hugely improved."

In St Mary's they highlight the worst disciplinarian of each game, and thus far it hasn't once been Brennan.

"Trevor can walk the fine line between aggression and discipline. He's been doing that all season. A lot of people don't understand that, and presume he's a headless chicken, which he's not. If I had the choice he'd be my first name on the teamsheet," says McGuinness.

Like many players, McGuinness still recalls a Senior Schools Cup defeat at 17 years of age as the nadir of his career. And with more reason that most. A penalty in the eighth minute of injury-time cost St Mary's College a quarter-final meeting with Clongowes. Last Saturday week's defeat changed all that.

"It was 10 times worse," he says. "I've never been in a senior changing room with so many players in tears. Guys apologising and guys telling each other not to apologise."

It's a place he never wants to revisit.

McGuinness admits he wondered whether the squad could reassemble with the same intensity, or whether things would be a little flat. If anything, he feels the French experience has hardened their resolve to win.

Too desperate to win?

"No, to be honest with you I think you have to be. A win at the weekend and then England at home . . . I'd be looking forward to that," he says. "And, who knows, you could be going for a Triple Crown against the Scots."

McGuinness seems to be on top of his game again more than ever. He still has his detractors and his service to Humphreys paled in comparison to Andy Matchett's at Ulster. Conditions, though, were unhelpful last Saturday week. Though he can get down and dirty with the best of them, there's no doubt that improved pitches and better weather facilitates his quick, top-of-the-ground running.

As a non-soccer man, some of his friends are disgusted that McGuinness is getting this opportunity to play on the hallowed Wembley turf today. He is up against one of the best number nines in the business this afternoon in Robert Howley and much depends on which pack holds sway.

If Paul Wallace can tweak the Irish scrum on the tight-side, that can give McGuinness the platform to unveil those trademark sniping breaks. If the Welsh pack is under pressure, it may force Howley to try too much, as is his wont. If not, then the Welsh may well target McGuinness.

Either way, McGuinness looks up to the challenge more than at any point for some time.

Silver linings and all that.