‘That 30 minutes is the most enjoyable bit — or the most horrible if you’ve lost’
Then the forward subs, then numbers nine to 15. And the backs replacements to the right of those.
From the time the team to face Scotland was revealed to them Tuesday evening, the Ireland players get changed in their match positions at the Aviva Stadium. So yesterday and today, players can set their clock by everything from here to kick-off. It’s routine and the only thing that changes are the players’ idiosyncrasies and their habits.
By game day, things become very individualised. Some players listen to music, some are watching video compilations of their best moments on iPods. It gives them that vital last shot of self-belief. Others are stretching, getting massages, getting taped, eating sweets, sitting there, chilled. Whatever makes them feel good. There’ll always be talkers — there has to be in a dressing room — but with so many of the players with earphones on, I would wonder, what’s the point?
Everything is clocked and scheduled. The time of the warm-up, team photo; it’s all plastered up around the changing room. As the kicker, I would have missed a lot of that because I’d have been outside for an hour before the kick-off. Well at least I did when I was a young buck. Towards the end, I tapered that back a bit.
The Aviva Stadium dressing room area gives you loads of elbow room. There are hot baths and cold baths for afterwards, generous personal space. Afterwards, these are the 30 minutes you bring with you forever and wish you could have them back. Just for a little bit. The slag at what someone did or didn’t do, the yapping from the opposition or towards them. That was after a win. That 30 minutes is the most enjoyable bit of my rugby career — or the most horrible bit if you’ve lost.
>There will be a smell of fresh paint on Sunday — and not just on the walls. The New Zealand performance under Joe Schmidt was as encouraging as the Australia performance the week before under Joe Schmidt was depressing. But that was last year. This is new and the momentum must be self-generated.
The Aviva Stadium on a Sunday afternoon against Scotland won’t do that. The tone will have to be set by the players and, in that respect, the camp environment, which has been excellent, will be a plus.
The potential for a Scottish banana skin is in Murrayfield, not Dublin. At home, players are going to be laying down markers to stay in the team; the ultra competitor wants to be the main man, and if you’re playing well, you are winning games against Scotland.
I was spoiled playing a lot of my early international career at Lansdowne Road with a standing crowd, a stadium full of passionate people. That’s not so long ago, but things have changed quickly. It was old, dreary but was possessed of an incredible atmosphere. Then we had our time in Croke Park, where those teams experienced incredible days in front of 80,000. It’s very hard to compare any atmosphere before or after with that of the Ireland-England game in Croke Park. The All Blacks game brought out the best in Irish supporters again but that atmosphere is only there for special occasions and won’t be replicated on Sunday. That said, it should be cranked up nicely for Wales, with the O’Driscoll-Gatland factor. Sunday might be tame at the start, but only if the Irish players and supporters allow it.
It can happen. There are big days you come out for the warm-up and you sense the nervousness of the crowd. That’s a great emotion to feed off — that sense that they are relying on you, they need you. Then there are low key Sundays when you wonder: are the crowd as interested today as other days?
The Six Nations schedule that features visits to the Stade de France and Twickenham is challenging but the sequence of games offers huge momentum. I don’t know when was the last time Ireland started with back to back home games, but it opens up all sorts of doors for Ireland; momentum is a cliché, but it all snowballs if you win your first two games, especially then with a potential Triple Crown at Twickenham. Then it’s home to Italy which will get you back on the horse if you’ve lost to England or sets you up to go to Paris for a Grand Slam or maybe a championship.
Either England or France will be on the back foot from the first weekend of games. The pressure on Philippe Saint-Andre tomorrow is huge, with the French at home and expectation influenced by the federation’s decision to pull all internationals from the Top 14 last week — as if that is going to be an immediate game-changer.
Depending on the level of detail in their coaching, they could be very good or they could be average. The No 10 position remains in a state of flux: you step in, I step out. They released Jules Plisson only for Remi Tales to get injured. Then the talk was that Francois Trinh-Duc would start, but France have plumped for Plisson. They have so many choices yet no unifying option; no one or nothing is given the opportunity to bed down.
England are building nicely, and they’ll be competitive, but their selection for tomorrow, especially in the back line, advertises their real intention — autumn 2015. At the moment they are lacking talismen — an O’Connell or an O’Driscoll. This Six Nations is mostly about finding those for the World Cup.
Here’s a thought: how many Munster men will make the Ireland squad for the next World Cup? More than five out of 32, but sure no one’s counting. Less Kiss said this week that people shouldn’t be looking at the Irish squad as a numbers game and he’s correct. Joe Schmidt’s squad isn’t a misrepresentation of the respective strengths of the provinces, but it is undoubtedly a talking point.
Not least in the Munster changing room. Eighteen Leinster, five Munster — is that an all-time low in an Irish squad? It’s quite incredible in some respects, but as James Coughlan said, Munster must start winning titles to get players back on the Ireland team.
From 2000 to 2008, it was Munster players getting the 50-50 calls, if they even were that. The dominant province gets rewarded and in a marginal call, they’ll get the nod more often than they don’t. I don’t think the squad would be any way weakened if Dave Kilcoyne was selected ahead of Jack McGrath but I’m no prop expert. It shows the rebuilding that’s required in Munster but the perverse thing about that is if it was Munster v Leinster in a cup semi-final, I’d fancy Munster.
And the nature of these things is that this will be stored away and employed to keep that chip on the shoulder nice and fresh. It’s an issue we should return to before the end of the year — the picture may look quite different because I genuinely believe the good times for Munster are coming. These guys just need more games — Stephen Archer, Dave Kilcoyne, James Cronin, Mike Sherry, Damien Varley and Dave Foley.
Tommy O’Donnell has been really unlucky with injuries, he just needs a run of three or four games. His building blocks have been very impressive, layer upon layer, season after season. And he possesses that key attribute — speed. But in the context of Sunday, can you quibble with Chris Henry’s selection, and the resolve he has shown to win the jersey? I played against him three or four times, and he’s a tough nut. The Ulsterman hasn’t had it easy, but he kept hanging in there. Nice to see the fella putting in the hard work getting his reward.
The one selection I would query with the coach is the omission of Simon Zebo. I know he hasn’t games in his legs, but he has the ability, like few others, to make an immediate impact on a game off the bench. But no game time last weekend in Kingsholm raises the pertinent issue of where does Zebo rank in Operation Schmidt?
The Ireland coach will look to his combinations as much as individual flair. D’Arcy and O’Driscoll offer a compelling partnership for Leinster but their consistent ability to step up to the next level for Ireland underlines their status as big-game players. Luke Marshall might have pushed to start, but D’Arcy deserves the jersey on the basis of the New Zealand effort alone.
At half-back, there are real grounds to believe that Conor Murray is getting better every game at patrolling his forwards, getting them to run the lines that he wants. As such a physical specimen, he has a constant advantage over every scrum-half. It won’t be long before Mike Phillips is the poor man’s Conor Murray!
