DONAL LENIHAN: Heaslip must rethink approach as leader
It appears ever thus in the reign of Declan Kidney.
Back in November it manifested itself in that crucial top eight IRB ranking game against Argentina just prior to the 2015 World Cup pool draw and right now Ireland face another backs-to-the-wall encounter against Scotland, a game which appeared reasonably straightforward a few weeks ago.
If the win over Wales and the manner of the performance in the opening 42 minutes, when Ireland raced into a 27 point lead, raised hopes of Championship success, the defeat by England, when Kidney’s men were more comprehensively beaten than the score might suggest, has again left many unanswered questions.
One of the reasons Ireland have competed so well in the Six Nations over the last decade is the player management programme, which has allowed us to maximise the return from a limited playing base. By and large injuries have been kept to a minimum and proper recovery has enabled players to enter each contest in peak condition. However, with the physicality of the game now at unprecedented levels, Ireland have begun to flag somewhat.
For some time a lack of consistency from game to game has haunted this Irish set-up and Kidney has struggled to put a finger on why this is the case. So much of the Irish game revolves around being competitive at the breakdown and this Ireland side has rightly been hailed as one of the best exponents in the northern hemisphere of the dark arts of generating turnovers and slowing opposition ball. The problem is this tactic extracts an enormous physical toll, so much so that when Ireland are forced to play tests on successive weekends, they find it difficult to execute at the same level.
In the 2011 World Cup Ireland were outstanding at the breakdown against Australia in that famous pool win in Auckland but had the luxury of resting a number of frontliners the following week against Russia before pressing the first-choice pack back into action for the Italy game with similar effect. Yet they failed to come anywhere near that level of performance one week later in that fateful quarter-final defeat by Wales.
After the opening heroics against the Welsh in the Championship, when their defensive resilience was tested to the full in a nailbiting last half hour, Ireland struggled from the outset against England eight days later and were clearly outmuscled over the 80 minutes. Ireland’s injury woes from that outing have reached catastrophic levels and the team have barely been able to train since. On the final whistle the Irish players looked physical and emotional wrecks yet somehow, England emerged from the battle without a single injury. Strange.
For me the haunted face of Jamie Heaslip said everything you needed to know about the team. I can understand how, in the infancy of his captaincy, he would have taken that defeat so personally and, given the amount of unforced errors and penalties he conceded in the game, he had every right to feel the pressure. I think Heaslip is only coming to terms with the responsibilities that accompany the captain’s armband. While the core responsibilities and the decision-making process on the field is now shared between key personnel, the captain is still the face of the team.
It is a tribute to the ease with which Brian O’Driscoll learned to carry out his duties over the years that Heaslip may have assumed there was nothing in the role that would impact on either his preparation or his overall game.
I have long been an admirer of Heaslip, not least for the manner in which he completely dominated opposite number Pierre Spies for the Lions in the series against South Africa in 2009. But he now carries additional responsibility as the leader of the side. The way you carry yourself is crucial to that and Heaslip’s laidback demeanour before games has always worked for him as an individual. Now, however, he must realise that he sets the tone for the side.
Young players, and this side has plenty of those, look to Heaslip for leadership and direction and it is no longer sufficient to just do what works for him. He now needs to make sure everyone else is focused and ready for battle.
I don’t subscribe for a moment to the view that wearing a specific brand of expensive headphones to the pre match toss of the coin is motivated by financial gain, as has been suggested since he appeared with them around his neck for the England game. If Richie McCaw wore them in the same manner, nobody would bat an eyelid.
I would be more concerned with a comment he made before the Argentina game, when he said that he was disappointed his former Leinster teammate Felipe Contepomi wasn’t playing, noting that “you can have so much craic with him during a game.”
Messing around with Contepomi in the heat of battle might work for him as an individual but as captain, it does not send the right message to his teammates. Could you imagine for one second O’Driscoll suggesting something like that? Captaincy is highly rewarding when you are winning but the burden of responsibility is at its greatest when things are not going well.
Unfortunately for Heaslip, he struggled to impose himself against England when his team needed him most and he must now rethink his approach as leader in a side that could well be short on confidence on the back of so many injury enforced absentees. He did a brilliant job in creating a positive atmosphere last November when a number of the big names were missing and must do the same this week.
Any side shorn Paul O’Connell, Tommy Bowe, Stephen Ferris, Johnny Sexton, Cian Healy and Gordon D’Arcy would struggle and therefore it was vital that Heaslip and Kidney struck the right tone from the moment the squad assembled in Carton House last Monday night.
It is in times of adversity that teams show character and grow.
Ireland haven’t experienced anything like the period of grief the Welsh players have had to endure on the back of their recent horrific losing streak, and in the most intense cauldron of all, Paris, they came good.
Central to that was the role played by stand-in captain Ryan Jones. He set the tone. Heaslip now has the opportunity to show he too can do something similar.
Kidney placed enormous trust in him when relieving O’Driscoll of his duties at the outset of this championship. Now is the time for the Leinster No 8 to show he has grasped the enormity of his new role.
