O’Gara focused on the whole nine yards

RONAN O’GARA is making no excuses for his poor touch-kicking performance in Rome.

He doesn’t blame the ball, admitting he tried for too much length and that his failures could have been costly. Yet he has an interesting theory as to why his mistakes - the stats showed 12 - weren’t as serious as many claim.

“There are two ways of looking at it,” he says. “You can miss touch 50 yards from your line or give a line-out 30 yards from your line and I didn’t think that was what we wanted. It’s an area to work on this week and so long as you don’t make the same mistakes two weekends in-a-row, then you’ve succeeded. The Mitre ball is lovely to kick off the ground but in terms of trying to spiral it, it’s difficult.

“In the first-half, I was probably trying for too much but in the second I wasn’t too concerned. We were playing downwind and I was trying to peg them back as far as I could. Once or twice I told myself, this has to go into touch. Other times, I was concentrating on the angle as opposed to finding touch.

“90% of our kicking goes through me. Other teams do analysis as well. At that level, it gets harder and harder if you’re not getting ball on the front foot. Fellas can line you up. It’s an area where if your first impact is clean, you usually have less and less people coming at you but this time it was head-on and that’s why it was so difficult.”

While O’Gara had his problems in Rome, almost entirely when kicking the Mitre out of hand, he was almost flawless at shots on goal, contributing 13 points to the Irish cause, while he was nothing short of superb when sweeping away those glorious long skip passes that provided Brian O’Driscoll with the space to torment the Azzurri throughout.

“Brian is obviously the best player in the world at the minute. His leadership and his consistency as a player, he’s unsurpassable in his field. We’ll miss him against Scotland, any team would miss him.

“Last year, Gordon had an outstanding international season. He wouldn’t have the experience of Brian but nonetheless he’s a hugely exciting talent. Now he’s gone, too, so it ain’t going to be easy. As for myself, apart from the line kicking, I was very happy with every other aspect of my own game in Rome, in terms of defence, goal-kicking, attack. The standards I have set for myself, if I can get the full package I’ll be thrilled. I’ve backed myself so many times in the past that all I think of is of making my next contribution an important one.”

It’s been go, go, go now for O’Gara and his national teammates since early December, so it’s only now they’re reaping the benefits of their ten-week gap at the beginning of the season. Still, you wonder as they go from week to week in the Heineken Cup and then into a seven-week camp with Ireland that they might sick and stale from it all.

Ronan puts an impressive spin on the question: “Actually, we’re the lucky ones, playing for our country. Think of fellas like Wally (David Wallace) and Quinny (Alan Quinlan), two great players who’d give anything to be involved, so if you ever needed motivation, that’s the kick up the ass you need.”

As for today’s game, he believes a lot will depend on the conditions.

“If we get a dry day, that’s when our back line comes into its own. If it’s wet and windy, that negates everything. Either way, though, you’re going to be tested in every area. Scotland have obviously started the season well. They were unlucky to lose to France in Paris so it will be big test for us and if they get any sniff of victory, they’ll be hard to beat.”