It tells us plenty about Paul O’Connell that in the build-up to the four World Cups in which he took part between 2003 and 2015, Ireland played 13 warm-up Tests and the former Irish captain started 10 of them. He was never one to shirk his duties or wrap himself in cotton wool.
Yet it also tells us much about the nature of these preparatory games that when asked about his experiences of them, and their slight oddity value, he admitted: “Yeah, they are. I don’t remember a lot of them.”
In this, O’Connell is, perhaps, much like the rest of us.
“I remember losing to England a few times, which always hurt,” was all he could recall from those 10 Tests, even though there were only two defeats to the auld enemy – Ireland winning four and losing six of the aforementioned 10 Tests to illustrate their often undistinguished pre-World Cup form.
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Now in his first preseason as a coach, he notes how they have changed dramatically.
“In the early days it was all running. You can run yourself into the ground. It’s actually easy to do. You don’t have to think about anything, you don’t have to think about the defence in front of you, or the attacking shape, or the lineout you’ve to call in 20 seconds. It’s actually easy to mind-numbingly run yourself into the ground and that’s what it was.
“Then it went to conditioning games because we wanted to get the ball in our hands a little bit more. Now, for us anyway, it’s down to, I suppose, trying to play our games, with various constraints in it that makes it a little bit [of] fun, or makes it harder, or makes it easier, for you to break or defend. I’d say that’s the way most teams have gone.
“You’re taking pictures all of the time in rugby,” added O’Connell. “As a defender you’re taking a picture of the attack and as an attacker you’re taking a picture of the defence.
“That’s what we were able to give these guys during the summer, opportunities to build their ability to take pictures and then make the right call on the back of that.”
O’Connell added: “I really like the way we’ve managed this preseason. I think we had players back in the day who probably needed to be protected from themselves a little bit more in terms of how they train. We’d a few guys who were capable of overdoing it a little bit and could have been a little bit flat comes the games for preseason.”
O’Connell believes the players will say it’s been a hard preseason but not the hardest they’ve suffered, before next week’s trek to “the fast track” in Portugal which has become a common pre-tournament change-up.
O’Connell acknowledged some players may well feel they are a little under trial in these warm-up games, albeit he countered: “They all want to go to the World Cup for sure, but selection for the World Cup is not an all-or-nothing thing. We talk a lot about just getting better. If we can get better individually, as a pack of forwards, or as backs, if we can get better as a team, incrementally, we can go places and achieve things.
“I’m sure plenty of guys are going to be disappointed. They’ve their sights set on getting their chances and taking it, but I think they’re all going to be better on the back of this preseason.”
O’Connell signalled that all bar Johnny Sexton of the 41-man squad will be afforded game time in the warm-up games, and the “silver lining” to the captain’s three-game suspension is that it affords Jack Crowley and Ciarán Frawley, in addition to Ross Byrne, welcome exposure.
“They don’t have as much practice or experience as Johnny has of taking ownership of it but that’s why these few weeks will be great for them. I think we play differently from Munster and Leinster, but there is a lot of similarities as well so it’s nothing massively new to them.
“They’ve all driven the ship for their provinces in big, big games and done really well. There’s a little bit of a tweak to how we do things and they’ve got to pick that up.
“It was a shame for Frawls that he was out injured as much as he was. it was a shame he didn’t get to go on the Emerging [Ireland Tour], where he could have gotten some game-time with us, the Irish coaches, but it is what it is.
“He has the talent, he has the experience, he has the football to be able to figure it out and, similarly, it gives an opportunity to Jack Crowley who has gone on and had a good season on the back of it and is in with us now.”
The faith in these outhalves is why Ben Healy could be opposing them in the final pool game against Scotland, and similarly their faith in Ryan Baird and Joe McCarthy has contributed to Jean Kleyn being reclaimed by South Africa – Ireland’s third Pool D opponents.
Kleyn won the last of his five Irish caps at the last World Cup, and acknowledging the lock’s fine season with Munster, not least his attributes as a maul defender and improved ball-handling, O’Connell admitted: “It was close, it was tight.
“I suppose some of the guys we had in the squad we felt we’d invested a good bit in them already, they were a little bit younger, they were quite big men as well in their own right. He went away and he’s entitled to go for what he went for, and I wish him all the best.”
