Media told to Equipe it clean

Pool D/France v Ireland: They sat up on the elevated stage in their new team hotel, Brian O'Driscoll and Eddie O'Sullivan, rocking with rage. In their hearts they knew a new city didn't mean a new freedom, or a new start. Bordeaux, Paris no matter. The same hungry eyes stared back; the same microphones obscured their impassive faces. But player and coach were simmering.

They knew too there were new agendas to challenge before their biggest match of the tournament, the biggest for France in the professional era, which has become a war of attrition. Coach and captain and the French media, never have the two been more polarised.

They sat with their arms folded, the trace of a thin scar under O'Driscoll's right eye, a reminder of when Ireland's cold war with things French began. O'Sullivan refused to link that ill-judged punch on his captain's face in Bayonne to the issues that have sparked his current indignation. But the unfounded rumours in the venerable sports newspaper, L'Equipe, of an Irish player with €300,000 of gambling debts has transformed Irish rugby's relationship with the media, the French in particular but some Irish too.

O'Sullivan expressed his disgust, O'Driscoll his suspicions and how this unfounded assault on one of Ireland's key players has had a galvanising power. Attack one and you attack all. Ireland have found a cause around which they hope to coalesce. It may be little but in the sea of frustration, self-questioning and dipping confidences Ireland have floated in since they creaked against Namibia in the first match, it is still more than nothing.

"What happened in the French media was a disgrace," said O'Sullivan. "It has angered people more than upset them. It's just nasty stuff but he (the player involved) is a tough individual and as long as I've known him he's a guy with a focus better than any one else I know and it is not going to put him off."

O'Driscoll was acerbic and spoke of a "slur" on his team-mate's private and personal life. The Ireland centre, who has suffered more unprovoked physical attacks than any other Ireland player, also pondered the why and the timing of it.

"If you're a cynic, you could say it's to knock things up in the build up to the game, try and throw a few sparks around the camp, try and unsettle us a bit," he said.

And so umbrage also gave way to conspiracy theories and swirling thoughts of president Nicolas Sarkozy in the French players' changing room asking them to win the Coupe du Monde for his presidency, of French politicians demanding that if French coach Bernard Laporte could not lead his team to the quarter-finals he should not be allowed to lead the nation as minister for sport when the competition is over. Ridiculous pressures, crazy thoughts.

Could the rugby world be so oval-shaped? Can it have changed so much, or, was the offensive article prompted by mere human frailty, a reflex response, however disproportionate, to the tetchy rudeness of an Ireland player towards French journalists in Bordeaux. If so, the player has paid a very high price indeed.

But as always O'Sullivan's instincts were to move on from the last point, to use what he could of a poisonous situation and make it work for him in whatever way possible. And so yesterday was also a forum for leading the Irish team to a new, fresh patch of ground.

"It motivates us. It motivates us to the performance we aspire to, to the performance we had reached earlier this year. It adds fuel to the fire," he said.

Using it all as an energising factor has also brought O'Sullivan and O'Driscoll into the arena of mind games and pre-match sparring. But they arrive riding tall, with the Ireland team low on performance and form but stepping on to the grass at the Stade de France from the high moral ground.

The two stood up and left with cameras trailing behind them. A wronged player, a wronged team.