JAMIE HEASLIP looked ahead to next weekend’s World Cup showdown with Italy and said Ireland must ignore the slide rule and go all out to win.

SATURDAY’s epic World Cup victory over Australia was kindled over a week of strong words and significant acts in the Ireland camp.

DECLAN KIDNEY has entrusted Conor Murray with steering Ireland to an opening World Cup win after giving the Munster scrum-half his first international start in Sunday’s Pool C clash with the United States.

Leinster coach Joe Schmidt believes Shane Jennings is deserving of his place in Declan Kidney’s World Cup squad, even if his inclusion only came after David Wallace suffered a knee injury against England on Saturday.

LEINSTER coach Joe Schmidt has had to weather early-season panic before and has advised Ireland’s fretful supporters and critics alike to reserve their judgments until the business gets underway in New Zealand next month.

COACHES might not like it but the reality is, when they name squads, it is always the people that fail to make them that gain the lion’s share of the attention.

DECLAN KIDNEY, inthe company of his coaching assistants, spent most of yesterday making the final adjustments to his Rugby World Cup squad, completing a measured process that wasn’t fuelled by last-minute panic or even altogether influenced by the results of the last three weeks. Adrenaline, he said in the aftermath of the 22-26 loss to France, is for the players.

LEO CULLEN knows just how difficult it can be to play back-to-back finals over successive weekends but the Leinster captain is hoping lessons from his past can stand to the province in this Saturday’s Magners League Grand Final.

IT WON’T be mentioned in publicly by the Leinster camp this week, but Friday’s visit of the Ospreys to the RDS is a little bit of a revenge mission.

A man who worked for at least two nursery schools is believed to have molested dozens of young children and used them to make child pornography in one of the worst cases of sexual abuse in the Netherlands.

THE availability of Shane Jennings for Leinster’s Heineken Cup clash against Brive at the RDS tomorrow might be good news for coach Michael Cheika but is hardly a source of delight for Sean O’Brien.

LEICESTER coach Richard Cockerill yesterday hailed the leadership of Geordan Murphy, the Leinster man on the cusp of captaining the Tigers to a third domestic and European double.

Brian O'Driscoll, Gordon D'Arcy and Girvan Dempsey return to Leinster duty for the sold-out Magners League tie with Ulster on Friday at Ravenhill (kick off: 7.30pm).