RUGBY: SAVE THE calf strain to Gordon D'Arcy, which will require a scan before he joins the Ireland squad in two days' time and Cian Healy's delayed departure, there were few absolutes at Dublin airport yesterday.

As Brian O’Driscoll sought to explain the dynamics of a team and how it works in shaded areas of confidence, momentum, consistency and even mood, his audience demanded hard evidence and certainties. It looked for black and white and echoed the ill-fated 2007 campaign in Bordeaux. The Ireland captain asked to be judged later.

“We weren’t playing in the World Cup. The World Cup is our next game,” said O’Driscoll with the confidence of a man going into his fourth campaign. “We’ve a big two weeks ahead of us. You are the ones making the comparisons (to 2007). We’re not paying attention to that.”

There were two different views soaring around the cramped hotel room but neither quite collided. Four defeats surely a recipe to sap confidence was countered by coach Declan Kidney’s assertion that down the corridor was a room full of buoyant players eager to step on to the stage.

Kidney confronted disappointment with his own experience and the team character. Results, he said, they chased but the lack of them shouldn’t blur opinion. Coach and player were asking, if not to believe right now then to resist plunging the dagger before they had even stepped on the plane for New Zealand.

“Listen,” said O’Driscoll. “You always have hopes for a win or two. We didn’t get them. So we’re not going to wallow in self-pity about it. Granted we haven’t won one of our four warm-up games. But we’ve done some really good stuff and definitely got a lot more match fitness under our belts.”

Kidney saw bigger pictures and bet Ireland’s hopes on the next two weeks’ preparation before they face Eddie O’Sullivan and the USA on September 11th, a day surely laden with emotion. He distinguished between the team evolving and the team kick-starting itself, pointing to the time of year and that previously World Cups had mostly taken place in the late autumn or in May, the inference being the players were adjusting to the time of year.

“If you don’t win it you are disappointed. But at times you have to see a bigger picture, see where you’re going,” said Kidney.

“Unfortunately we’re without a win. What we didn’t want to do is cloud over positive things that were happening around the results. We didn’t get results and we have to live with it. You have to look at trying to get up and going. It’s not so much evolving. That was last season. This season has been about trying to get up and going. I felt ‘let’s go in at the deep end, against the teams that we know are going to be knocking on the door for the title,” he added.

Thoughts insolently swept to Murrayfield and Scotland’s triumph as much as England or France as the questions arrived to the top table dripping with doubt, heavy under the weight of dampened ambition.

World Cup campaigns have not since “the disaster at Lens” framed Ireland’s finest hours. The exchanges, though, lacked cynicism. They were not scornful or sneering but they were suspicious and dubious if also buoyed with hope that the Grand Slam and Heineken Cup-winning core of players could find their wings.

“Take a look at the records. It’s only the second of the seven World Cups that’s happened in September. All the others happened in October, November or around May, which meant the players were coming in from a different place,” noted Kidney as he continued to try to get heads in the room into a more realistic space.

“Ireland has played 22 World Cup fixtures. Eleven of them have been against Tri-Nations sides and of the 11 we have only two wins under our belt. That shows how difficult these championships are.”

O’Driscoll hopes Ireland can enjoy New Zealand. He will tell his players to step over the whitewash with a smile, play good rugby; the immeasurable factor of team well being. He has played in three World Cups and got to one quarter-final from the lot. Play with a smile, said the captain. Coach Kidney nodded beside him. But O’Driscoll wants more than a smile, more than quarter-final for his last.

“I wouldn’t say that’s anything to shout about,” he says. “I don’t want to finish my own career not having achieved on the biggest stage. There’s the motivation for me. People have different motivations but that’s mine. I want to finish my last World Cup on a high and do something no Irish side has done, so . . .”

We all want that. But there has been little evidence of smiles on faces over the last month. The player, harsh enough on himself, on his own World Cup career, knows the team must do better.

“Yeah it does need to get better,” he says. “I think 15 minutes in the French home game at the end isn’t going to do it if you don’t get your game together for the middle part.”

O’Driscoll’s injury is expected to clear, while there are no issues surrounding Jamie Heaslip’s concussion or flanker Seán O’Brien. “He (D’Arcy) is not ruled out of anything yet. It’s a slight calf strain. The best medical advice was to let the injury sort itself out,” said manager Paul McNaughton. “Everything else is fine.”