Wood stresses need for team to start winning

As a barometer of the mood in the Irish camp, and of Ireland's chances prior to a game, Keith Wood is usually a pretty good one.

Too much so for some people's taste. The Irish captain's brutal honesty prior to the opening joust of the season against New Zealand may not have been what every green-tinged optimist wanted to hear, but it was an understandable dose of realism.

Hence, it makes his utterances yesterday all the more encouraging. Relaxing in the foyer of the Castletroy Park Hotel, the media's darling undid one of the bandages which adorn his much beaten body, and came to a considered conclusion. "I think we're going to win boys. Dare I say that?"

Pens jumped onto pads and Wood continued. "I just think it's about time. I do actually. I'm confident. We've had a few good sessions in the last week and we've looked at some of the problems we've had. Basically we're good enough to win, at this stage, and for this match.

"If we can get rid of some of the basic errors we make, or that we made in the last couple of matches, especially the Italian match. And I do and will repeat myself unfortunately, but once we get into a position to score a try, we have to score. That's being ruthless and being clinical. Once you get into the 22, you need a certain amount of patience."

"To keep turning over the ball - I mean, you're not going to score off every single bit of possession that you have - but at times we've been just a little too frantic. It's simple, it's quite basic."

Unprompted, Wood added: "I know Brian has come in for a little bit of criticism. Maybe he should temper his game plan because maybe some of the players aren't capable of doing it. The players are definitely capable of doing anything, and what we've been trying to do. It's just that some of our execution at times has been a bit hurried."

Lamenting the basic errors made in the Italian game at length, Wood surmised that sooner rather than later this team are going to learn from their mistakes. Underneath all the old cliches - every game is important and so on - this is a massively important game, much more so than the Italian one.

Wood wouldn't go that far, though he conceded: "I don't know if it's a do-or-die situation but I'd be really, really cheesed off if we lost."

A silver lining accruing from that Italian game was the enforced three-week break for the concussed Wood.

"I've enjoyed being off. I found it kind of unusual. I didn't want to be off but it meant I had to take fully one week off. I feel a lot fitter. It's very hard to do true fitness work during the season and I trained pretty hard for three weeks."

Mentally too, he should be a lot fresher and so won't have to dig so deep for one of those almost recklessly enthusiastic performances of his. Since the Lions odyssey, he's noticed that he "tends to get a few more bangs," and attributes this to more unwanted attention on the pitch. "It's not necessarily a dirty thing."

Regardless of whether the English full-time game has made them better players or not, the debate rages as to whether it has made them somehow less focussed, or more jaded, for international duty.

Wood maintains that there is essentially no difference between being home-based or English-based.

Wood, like any of this team who's played the Scots over the last decade, owes the Scots one or more. His sole defeat to the Scots dates back to the 26-13 loss in Edinburgh three years ago. "I got dropped after it, deservedly so. I do owe them one actually, and I rarely go in for those lines as you know.

"I would also like to finish a match," he added, his last full 80 minutes in the green dating back to the Italian game over 12 months ago. That winning feeling is even rarer.

Most of the team have limited enough experience of winning and it's significant to note that even the brilliant Wood - along with Paul Wallace perhaps the only Irish player as things stand who would make it onto a putative Five Nations XV - has only been on winning Irish sides twice in 11 internationals, and they were against the might of Japan and the USA.

"It's quite hard. It's hard trying to change that around. People don't realise that but it is quite difficult. Notwithstanding all that, I think we're good enough, and the more we start thinking we're good enough, for this match especially, the better. We have to play, mind. There's no point in being good enough and letting the day slip past, because we seem to do that against Scotland with monotonous regularity."

Of course, there's a hint of the vicious circle about this, as nothing would do more for this team's mental hardness and self-belief than a much cherished and rare win. "We do need a win," says Wood, perhaps making the most understated yet substantial comment of the week.