O’Driscoll: Money makes the decisions
That’s the opinion of Munster and Irish International second-row Mick O’Driscoll who yesterday compared the 9pm (local time) television dictated slot unfavourably with pre-lunch time kick-offs. He believed it is an unacceptable imposition on the central figures, the players.
“From a player’s perspective a 12.45pm slot is horrendous but 9pm is, well, just out there completely,” he said.
“The players hate it and there are reasons for that. Why? You take a normal day for a normal person, by eight o’clock in the evening you’ll be getting tired. We’re then going out to perform at that time and we’re the exact same as everyone else in terms of body clocks.
“You can prepare for that by taking certain actions, but it’s not right.
“At the end of the day it’s all down to money. I’ve spoken to people at provincial and international levels and everyone knows that the money at this level of the game dictates what happens.
“Unfortunately you’ve got to go with it, indeed some soccer matches start at 10pm on the continent, and finishing a game at midnight seems crazy to me.
“If players were asked, you would have 100% disagreeing with it. In France last week, the timing of the game was courting disaster, given that weather warnings had been issued.
“They said the offer was there [to change the time] but it’s funny you only hear these things after the event.
“To be fair to Dave Pearson, he was put in an awful position but if there’s only one square foot of the pitch that’s hard then it shouldn’t be played, people could get serious injuries. Then it comes down to players’ welfare. You have to take your hat off to Dave Pearson for doing it, a lot of referees might have felt the pressure and gone ahead.
“Remember, had it gone ahead, you would have to get to 60 minutes before the game could be declared a win or a loss.”
These next four weeks, O’Driscoll has more than starting times on his mind as Munster face a run of four RaboDirect Pro12 games, each and all crucial if the goal of finishing second to secure a home semi-final is to be reached.
And to do that he needs help from the younger contingent. In Peter O’Mahony he sees a player capable of continuing the Munster tradition. He even predicted O’Mahony could become one of the great Irish players.
Although his own Heineken Cup activity this season has been limited, O’Driscoll will be one of the key figures in that set of games, with Munster’s international players unavailable for mostly all of them due to their involvement with Ireland.
“It’s a tough programme, starting tomorrow away to Treviso, home to Cardiff Blues next Friday and then away to Dragons and Aironi on March 3 and 11.
“We’ve got three away games and we probably have to win four out of four to get into second. This could be the most important stage of the season, it’s a stage where we could struggle to make the top four if we don’t win them. On the other hand we’ll be right in there if we do; therefore it’s vital for us to win all four.”
O’Driscoll doesn’t see any reason why the results won’t flow, insisting Munster are in as good a place as could be expected at this stage of the season.
“I suppose you have to look at where we’re at, we have reached a home [Heineken Cup] quarter-final which is the ultimate aim. We topped the pool and for the first time. We won all six games in the pool stages. We can still qualify in the top two of the RaboDirect relatively easily in the sense that we’re mostly in control of our destiny, so you would have to say it has been a success.
“We were written off on the basis that we weren’t good enough last season which, granted, we weren’t and deserved the criticism, but we still won what was the Magners League last year. Sure, our European campaign wasn’t what we wanted but we turned it around this season and I think we are where we want to be.”
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