O'Driscoll needs his space

Despite scoring 15 tries in the opening two games, with Geordan Murphy, Rob Henderson and David Wallace all back at home, this Irish team still looks a little short of firepower for the bigger tests that lie ahead, writes Gerry Thornley in Adelaide

Furthermore, Brian O'Driscoll still looks a little subdued by his standards, although it would be no surprise if - after increased mutterings about his less prodigious running game - he cut loose on Sunday.

In part he's undoubtedly a victim of his own exalted standards. If you'd gone to a bookies at the start of the season and bet that O'Driscoll wouldn't have scored any of Ireland's 32 tries in five games to date, you'd be a wealthier man. He's now gone eight Tests without a try dating back to Rome in February, his longest scoreless run in an Irish jersey by some distance.

He's undoubtedly become a more selfless player than before, a prime example being the unselfish way he passed to John Kelly for Ireland's ninth try last Sunday against Namibia. Before, there would have been times when he'd have put his head down, and as Matt Williams once remarked, "God touched Brian O'Driscoll to run with the ball."

He also seems to be switching more with Kevin Maggs in planned moves as either a playmaker or decoy, and the latter's passing is not his strength, though this will be the 29th time they'll have played together. Heavily marked nowadays too, there appears to be fewer skip-one moves designed to give him a run, though again perhaps O'Sullivan is keeping some tricks up his sleeve until Sunday. In any event, the coach expressed himself "very happy" with O'Driscoll.

"People are looking for Brian O'Driscoll to start breaking lines and busting open defences. We're looking at the fact that people aren't going to let him do that any more. It's the old story, as your name gets bigger, the gaps get smaller. So he's got to focus on putting other people into space."

O'Sullivan also highlighted O'Driscoll's tackle count and work-rate, especially his ability to contest ball at the tackle area and force turnovers.

"From my point of view he's doing what I want him to do. He's playing well in defence, he's beginning to put other people into space and if the line-breaks happen, they happen. We don't want to force it."

Meanwhile, Keith Wood has again hinted strongly he will retire after the World Cup.

"I would say, 99 per cent, yes that is the end of me as a rugby player. You always keep a little something back just in case. I actually won't make the decision until after the World Cup," said Wood, smiling.

"I've kind of engineered a situation where it comes to me making a call. I don't have a contractual or moral commitment to a club or a province, and basically it will come down to whether I'm physically fit enough to maintain it."

Or, one imagines, how he feels mentally.

"Right now I'm fine but you're asking me questions I really don't want to answer. I'll talk around it all day if you keep asking me questions," he laughed, teasing his audience some more. But, all the signs are that he will bow out after this World Cup.

Wood is bracing himself for a particularly physical game on Sunday, given the Pumas' style of play and especially their style of scrummaging. Although he maintained the Pumas' famed scrum doesn't stand out as much as it used to, because so many other Test sides have improved in this area, it remains a traditional strength of their game.

"An awful lot of the contact in an Argentinian scrum goes through the hooker. It's a different style. A lot of the pressure is centred on the scrum rather than on the outside. Traditional Home Nations scrummaging is more through one prop or the other depending on the situation. It's just a constant heavy weight."

Wood was intrigued by one questioner who asked him if he was in any way envious of Argentinian hookers who have been a part of such mythology.

"I don't know. That's a kind of interesting question actually. A sense of envy? I don't really. I think there's been times in rugby when scrummaging has become unbelievably important, and then the IRB will make changes to the rules - for safety reasons for the most part - over the last number of years, and it's almost been downgraded. But then everybody finds a way around those (rules), and it gets brought back up again.

"I think we're at a stage now where scrummaging is very important, which is good, because we're not playing rugby league. The scrummaging is a very, very important facet of the game."

Wood disagreed with the notion this was the biggest game of his career.

"Having said that, it is very important. We want to have a situation where we win our game on Sunday and qualify for the quarter-finals on Sunday. Then we can go in unhindered, unfettered, and we can play the following weekend to try and get ourselves into a stronger position."