‘Better than ever’ Rory Best still remembers his first cap

Rory Best will become the fifth Ireland player to reach 100 caps following Brian O'Driscoll, Ronan O'Gara, Paul O'Connell and John Hayes when he leads the team against Australia in the test match at the Aviva stadium on Saturday evening (5.30).

Sitting at the top table following the captain’s run on Friday afternoon, he offered a personal insight into the milestone, initially proclaiming that he didn’t think he’d reach a century of appearances for Ireland. “I still remember my first cap (and) it doesn’t seem that long ago.

“When you get your first cap for Ireland it’s like a dream come true and all you want to do is get the next one. After that every time you get picked you feel incredibly lucky. Then you tick quite close to 50 and you think ‘imagine getting to 50’. But now to be on the verge of 100 caps, it’s quite difficult to believe.

“I feel I’m playing well. I think there’s a lot made of turning 30. Everyone then says you’re done. But for me age is just a number. When you’ve never been overly fast and you lose a little bit of pace as you get older, hopefully it doesn’t matter. Hopefully you make it up in your head.

“I don’t see that I’m playing any worse than I ever did, so I feel fit, happy with my game and the big thing for me is I’m really enjoying it at the minute.”

Understandably he hasn’t overly dwelled on the landmark and instead prioritised winning against the Wallabies. “I think it will probably be more important whenever I eventually do retire, which will hopefully be a while, and you sit back and look at everything you’ve achieved.

“I hope what these milestones do is show the amount of support there is out there, not just for me personally, but for the whole Irish team. The amount of support we got off the Chicago game, and now the last 24 hours since the squad announcement.

“The amount of well-wishers from social media and text messages, it just brings it home to you that there is a lot of support for us out there, and really a lot of people who want us to do well. That’s probably what the milestones do at the minute.

“But as I say, when I do look back this will rank up there as one of, if not the best achievements I’ve had in the game.”

It was time to switch to matters Australian. “With the way the Aussies have been going, they are showing that they are a real quality outfit. For us to finish a very tough autumn with three wins out of four would be a big boost for us.

"And I think as well, it's a bit the same as when we went to South Africa, a lot's been made of who we don't have. But I said it back in June, look how exciting it is on who we do have. We have Jacko (Peter Jackson) and Garry Ringrose coming in there; they're young, they're exciting players.

“Ringer last week was very, very good for us. There’ll be no fears of him, and Josh (van der Flier) on the bench, they’re real students of the game. You can’t get them out of the video room, they just want to learn and improve all the time. And that’s infectious, even for the boys who’ve been around a long time.

“They bring a certain degree of energy, so it would be a big boost for us to show that we backed up the New Zealand win. We’re in the business to win games, and we’re disappointed not to win last week.

“We want to go out tomorrow and perform, so no matter who steps in we’re under pressure to fit in and perform. That’s how you grow.

Sitting alongside him was Ireland's defence coach Andy Farrell who did his best to inadvertently embarrass Best when asked about the Ulsterman's contribution. "I think he's outstanding. I can actually say I think he's playing better than ever, because I've seen it over the last six months.

"Captaincy at this level is a tough old gig. He took over the Six Nations last year, filling in big shoes. I was on tour in South Africa I was very impressed with his leadership then. And now we've come to the autumn series and it's gone up another level.

“I believe the captaincy, his composure is married together massively with his appetite to improve and get better. And that’s why I believe he’s playing as good as he ever has.”

Ireland coach Joe Schmidt, speaking at Thursday team announcement also paid tribute to his on-field lieutenant. "I always saw Besty as a really difficult guy to get on top of when I was coaching Leinster. We always saw him as the guy who, if he dropped his head, you knew you were on top of Ulster. It just didn't happen."

“He is the guy who a lot of people don’t notice, but his clean-out numbers and his carries when there’s nowhere to go. There’s slow ball, a brick wall and Besty will put his hand up and he’ll still get his feet under and give a bit of a nudge forward so you can start constructing something. Defensively, he works so hard that he’s pretty hard to fault.”

“I thought his throwing last week, they were getting (Brodie) Retallick, (Sam) Whitelock and (Kieran) Read up; there was a lot of traffic there and the windows were about (indicates a small gap with hands) this wide that he had to hit. But we got some great lineout ball under real pressure with them clattering into Dev (Toner) and trying to put as much pressure as they could on him or Donnacha (Ryan). “

“He’s calm in the moments, when you need to be calm, when you need to get your heart-rate down and be accurate but when you need you heart-rate up and you need to be working, he can be leading there as well.”

“To be fair to Besty, the biggest two similarities I’d make with him and Paul O’Connell are, one, their preparation. They go through the most thorough preparation they can to make sure physically they’re ready to go. Two, neither of them say a lot. Neither of them talk a lot.

“There are other guys who say things in the team, he is action-focused and he just gets on and does his bits of the game really well and he’ll spur others on when required. I’ve the utmost respect for him.”

So too should the Ireland supporters at the Aviva stadium on Saturday evening.