Wholesale changes not on cards for Russia game

WORLD CUP POOL C:ON THE face of it, Ireland's win over Australia not only leaves them in pole position in Group C but gives them more elbow room to fully utilise their squad and give game time to those who have been in the stands thus far.

A half a dozen fall into that category, namely Seán Cronin, Leo Cullen, Donnacha Ryan, Isaac Boss, Paddy Wallace and Fergus McFadden, while Damien Varley has now arrived in place of Jerry Flannery. The odds on the locks and at least one of the latter two starting in Rotarua on Sunday have increased given Paul O’Connell and Gordon D’Arcy are troubled by slight hamstring twangs, though at least scans have confirmed nothing worse than strains.

Cullen and Ronan O’Gara will surely start, as might Donncha Ryan and Denis Leamy, along with a first start for Paddy Wallace at his third World Cup. But the management might also take the view that the likes of Jamie Heaslip, Seán O’Brien, Rob Kearney and Tommy Bowe need more game time.

Certainly there would seem little point in risking anyone with minor ailments, with a strong case for lightening the load on Cian Healy and Mike Ross given the proximity of the Azzurri scrum a week on, while perhaps also keeping some of the heavy hitters amongst the replacements if needs be.

Conceivably, Ireland could make up to 13 changes when the team is announced on Friday, but manager Paul McNaughton has ruled that out. “Yes we could (make 13 changes), but we won’t,” said the Irish team manager. “You saw the USA game. We will prepare properly, we won’t make that many changes and will take the game extremely seriously and win that, and get it over with, and then move on to Italy.

“We’ve used about 24/25 players as it is, or at any rate 24/25 have togged out, so if we do give (a game to) some of those guys who haven’t had game time, it doesn’t infer 13 changes; it doesn’t infer massive change.”

Yesterday was a well-earned “down day”, with many of the squad opting for some white water rafting or jet ski-ing, while about a dozen played golf in their new lakeside retreat of Taupo, before their 45-minute drive to Rotarua on Thursday. Today is back to work, for they cannot bask in the glow of Eden Park for too long, as Ireland will almost certainly have to win their final game against Italy in Dunedin on Sunday week to ensure qualification.

“It is going to go down to the last game unless Italy slip up against their lower-ranked opponents,” maintained McNaughton. “We’ve always said this. We beat Australia but we’ve still got to win our other games. Bonus points don’t matter here. We’ve got to front up and beat Russia and we’ve got to beat Italy. And if we don’t beat Italy all those wins would have gone to waste.

“We always knew that while beating Australia gave you a chance of winning the group, we always felt that we really had to beat Italy to qualify.

“But what it also does is give the guys confidence,” added McNaughton of the fringe benefits. “Some people thought we were just coming out with a mantra that there was a performance in us but all the guys were consistent in terms of their comments on this to the media, and some of the media took it cynically, and some took it at face value.

“They (the players) knew from training, and from being with this group, that they had prepared well and that there was a performance there. They were frustrated that they hadn’t delivered on that performance in August but at the end of the day they delivered when it was most important to do so.”

After keeping the potent Wallabies tryless, McNaughton also paid tribute to the influence of Les Kiss. “He is world-class. Statistically he is one of the best defensive coaches around on the international front, and it’s over a range of 20 or 30 matches with Ireland over the last few years. Of course there was great passion in the game, but there had to be good technical defence as well to keep out a team like Australia.”

Backs coach Alan Gaffney accepts the job is only half done in terms of winning the pool, and that even allowing for injuries, lack of game time and the conditions against the USA, there were “no excuses” for dropping 11 balls against the Eagles. It rained plenty at Eden Park but a la the English game, facing their executioner seemed to concentrate Irish minds.

“It wasn’t just that we dropped the ball wide out,” said Gaffney of the USA game, “we lost our alignment, we took too much out of it on the inside, we put pressure on the outside support runners, so we created pressure unnecessarily. I think, on Saturday, we didn’t push passes, we retained the ball better, we were prepared to build the phases, we knew we wanted to go through them, not around them, and we played probably the way we wanted to play.”

Irish Cup rugby? “Yeah, it is Irish Cup rugby and the boys have been pretty successful with that over a long period of time, and going out there you haven’t got the bonus point in the forefront of your mind, you’ve just got the win in the forefront of your mind and that’s what cup rugby is about, and on Saturday we showed we can perform at that level.”

But Gaffney agreed it cannot be another one-off. “You can’t leave that one on the shelf and lose one of your two next games, and then miss out on the quarter-finals. That would be criminal. We understand where we put ourselves now, we understand we have to go out and perform in our next two games. We’ll pay Russia an enormous amount of respect. We understand they’re an up-and-coming team, but we understand that if we go out and perform to our best we’ll put them under a fair bit of pressure.”