PICTURE THE scene: a conference room the size of a swanky living room, with over 70 media types crammed in, including photographers, journalists and 13 television cameramen and women, to the sound effects of cameras whirring and flashes flashing. Standing room only for about half the room. It’s a long way from Queenstown now. There must be a big match this weekend.
Not exactly the preferred way of spending lunchtime for the relatively camera-shy Declan Kidney, and the same is probably true of Brian O’Driscoll.
Yet in keeping with his relaxed good humour since arriving in New Zealand five weeks ago, through it all the Ireland captain was laid-back almost to the point of being prostrate.
Leading his country into only their second quarter-final in his four World Cup campaigns, not even any memories of his fateful Lions stay in the very same hotel, when recovering from his badly-damaged shoulder as Speargate rumbled on can bother him. Reclining on a hard-back seat to such an extent that he almost made it into an armchair, he smiled regularly and responded to each question in the same tone, almost a drawl.
Coming into the tournament, O’Driscoll spoke of wanting to have some good World Cup memories after three under-achieving previous campaigns. This tournament has probably achieved that already, though they’ve raised the bar for themselves now. But, facing into his last World Cup quarter-final, O’Driscoll admits his experience allows him to enjoy the build up and the occasion more.
“I’d say you can enjoy it more. Coming out of your pool – considering four years ago – is a bit of a relief but you get over that very quickly, particularly as we managed to win the pool. But I suppose if you’ve lived an experience an amount of times you are able to relax and try and enjoy the moment a little bit more the more times you go through it and try to let your focus be on how you play, not let it be used up by all that nervous energy.”
Nor does O’Driscoll draw any parallels or lessons from his one previous quarter-final, the 2003 thrashing by France, when Ireland were 37-0 down by the half-hour mark against France.
“We probably got our game plan wrong that day and we got blown away early on and the game was effectively over after 25 or 30 minutes. I’d like to think we’ll be in the game a bit longer this time around,” he said with a knowing smile.
No less than Wales with their infusion of new, younger attacking talent, O’Driscoll would also like to think Ireland’s game has evolved since they beat Wales to clinch the Grand Slam in 2009, that they’ve became a little less predictable and with more of an attacking focus on multi-phases than on first phase.
The core of this side are desperately close to ensuring their status as Ireland’s golden generation, but they are also an exceptional bunch of professionals. It helps when you’re winning, of course, but O’Driscoll and the rest of the survivors are evidently enjoying the squad’s camaraderie.
His long-time Leinster sidekick and the man with whom he shares an intuitive world record partnership in midfield is Gordon D’Arcy. This will be their 48th Test together (which creates the possibility of reaching 50 . . . sssshhhh!) and D’Arcy explained how this has evolved over the last three months mostly in camp together.
“It’s been growing – as hard as it might be to believe – from the August camp. It’s actually been growing with every single game, despite what was happening on the pitch, there was very much a single-mindedness within the group. When you have that really strong unity within the group you don’t have to do all these team-bonding sessions. When it’s there, a coach just sits back and steers it, but when it’s not there you have coaches trying to force something like that. We didn’t need that.”
The contrast with, say, the French squad is stark.
They’re good professionals too, who do not have an apparent feeling of entitlement whenever they hit the town, and, underpinning most of the Irish successes in recent times, there remains a respect for the opposition.
Not that it borders on fear, and questions regarding the likelihood of Warren Gatland sending the cavalry down the 10-12 channel prompted D’Arcy to remark: “Myself and Ronan (O’Gara) have played against that a number of times before. This back line has played against Wales plenty of times and we’ve done very well against them. They’ve got (George) North coming in and (Jamie) Roberts coming down that channel and (Toby) Faletau down the middle, we’ve played against them before. We’ll give them the appropriate amount of respect, we’ll look at it but we’ve done this job before and we know we can do it again.”
Although Shane Williams was expected to return, along with James Hook, the emergence of North along with a rejuvenated Jamie Roberts (like some Irish players, he struggled to overcome that year-long post-Lions hangover) is likely to make this one of the biggest back lines D’Arcy and O’Driscoll have ever faced.
“I don’t think it matters. You tweak things a little bit with regards to attack but I don’t think you need to change much from a defensive point of view. You work hard on building your system and getting your structures in place and you occasionally might throw in a little option here and there but more often than not we’ve defended with each other to the point of being comfortable, a certain way, and I don’t think just because it’s a different back line you’re facing there’s enough reason to change it up and go with something you might not be as comfortable with.
“So we’ll just try and defend as a unit as best we can, irrespective of who we play against. We’ve played against some big back lines in the past and against some we’ve had joy and we’ve managed to curtail them a bit.” But not the least remarkable aspect of their longevity and consistency is how the Irish duo have punched above their weight in pretty much all of their previous 47 Tests together. Once more into the breach then.
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