O’Donovan keeps his feet firmly on ground

ON the surface, Niall O’Donovan is not the worrying, fretting kind.

He laughs a lot, he is good fun, but deep down the pressure of defeats last season was telling.

After joining the Irish set up with Declan Kidney, O'Donovan was party to two crushing Six Nations defeats in Paris and Twickenham.

Now, however, the wheel has turned full circle, and the smile is even a little broader than usual.

And like Kidney, his feet remain very firmly on the ground.

"I was absolutely delighted with the result against France," he enthused, before reflecting: "I don't want to be parochial, but it was like a Munster Senior Cup match. I remember being hammered 12-9 back in those days. With 20, 30 minutes to go, we stuck at it. No matter what the French threw at us, we came back. The defensive organisation was superb and in fairness I thought we deserved it at the end."

O'Donovan has been involved with enough Munster teams up against powerful French sides to fully appreciate the extent of the battle that lay in wait last Saturday.

The scrum was going to be especially demanding, and as a Shannon man, O'Donovan was particularly pleased for Marcus Horan.

"We were up against a big pack and there was a lot of talk about Marcus. And after what they did on the field, you don't have to say a lot afterwards," he claimed. "I thought the scrum was excellent, the lineout was as good as 100%, and towards the end, they got their maul going as well.

"They did very well against a big, physical French pack. The maul was a bit slow to get going but the French are very good at defending in this area and did so very well against England as well.

"They're a very good and well-drilled side, so to come out even at the end of it is a fair achievement against a pack like that.

"No matter what game it is, there will always be aspects with which you are unhappy.

"That's why we're still in a job and there to point these out for the next day. We could have been a bit snappier up front, we could have been snappier with the maul, but the way France were defending it was very hard to do.

"Towards the end, I thought we came out on top. There are a few things that need tweaking.

"I thought we did reasonably well in the scrum and very well in that they took off Marconnet and brought on Califano."

On the face of it, one might fear there's a certain imbalance to the shape of the scrum given that John Hayes is 6'4" in height and in comparison his Shannon teammate Horan looks a lot smaller. O'Donovan clearly enjoyed answering that one.

"John is probably six-three and Marcus is over six feet," he laughed. "You make allowance for little things like that and they can be solved.

"The main thing about any scrum unit is that all eight are committed to it. Basically, that's what's happening at the moment.

"Saturday wasn't a day for loose play. I went out there before the start and the wind was all over the place, you didn't know where it was blowing.

"It was a day for mistakes and whoever cleaned up theirs the better were probably going to win."

If Ireland finish second in their pool of the World Cup and France win theirs, as is widely expected, they will meet in the quarter-finals.

I asked O'Donovan if he felt Saturday's result held any significance for that likely scenario next autumn.

"Not at all, the same way as last year's game in Paris had no bearing on this game. They beat us out the gate then and we came back this year and won," he maintained.

"Next year we go to Paris and it will be a different game again. There are going to be so many changes, I don't think this game counts at all."

I then tried another tack that Ireland were all set for a Grand Slam encounter with England at Lansdowne Road in three weeks time.

He didn't take the bait.

"Hold on for a minute, we still have to play Wales over in Cardiff," he pointed out.

"We'll be roaring hot favourites, I suppose, but you're still going into their home patch. Everybody likes playing at home.

"Wales put on a good show against England who are a superb team, and to hold them like Wales did, you have to sit up and listen to them."

O'Donovan's long time friend and coaching partner Declan Kidney returns on Saturday week to the venue where he suffered such deep disappointment on his last visit there as the coach of the Munster team.

They lost the Heineken Cup final that day at the Millennium Stadium a disappointment he is unlikely to ever erase from his memory bank.

Despite Ireland's great record in Cardiff, Kidney said: "Wales will be a test for us, especially now because they are facing only the second ever whitewash in their proud history.

"They won't want that again. You will have two teams playing for equal amounts. And we're away.

" We're now getting the benefits of the World Cup qualifiers in that we've been together virtually all season.

"Fellas have now played more games at international level than they have for the provinces."