D’Arcy wary of French disconnection and backlash
Ever since he emerged on the international scene, the Wexford centre has been a real ‘will o’ the wisp’ on the ball. After a difficult 2005, D’Arcy has been back to his best with his province.
Finding a gap against the Italians, however, was harder than meeting an honest man in prison, though much of that can be put down to the visitors blatantly ignoring the offside line.
“There was a lot of talk about them being offside, but my view is that they’re only offside if they’re whistled offside,” said the 25-year-old, who will celebrate his birthday on French soil this Friday.
“They played the referee very, very well. I suppose towards the second half we became a little bit more direct. We got over the gain line, we started getting penalties and started putting them away a little bit more.
“We probably tried to over-complicate it in the first half. I suppose we wanted to carry on from where Leinster and Munster had left off in the Heineken Cup. We probably didn’t get the balance right.”
Balance has been the buzz word surrounding the Irish side all week.
Yesterday in Killiney virtually every player interviewed was quizzed on why the combined strengths of Leinster and Munster were still adding up to considerably less than the sum of their parts.
Leinster supporters will point to the absence of Keith Gleeson, whose forays open up such space for the likes of D’Arcy and Brian O’Driscoll.
“It’s not as simple as that, even if it comes across that way. Ireland aren’t going to play the same game as Leinster or Munster. You need to find a certain balance because you have different players in different positions.
“If you look at the (Italy) game very closely, a lot of very small things went wrong and we compounded that by making bad decisions.
“If you take that out, we would have got in for a couple more scores,” claimed D’Arcy.
In Paris, mistakes carry a more exorbitant price tag than most other cities.
D’Arcy’s one experience there came two years ago in the Six Nations opener at the Stade de France.
Three months before that, Ireland’s World Cup ambitions had been punctured by a French hammering in Melbourne and, with O’Driscoll, Geordan Murphy and Denis Hickie missing, the subsequent 18-point defeat was seen as damage limitation.
Though Ireland will again travel under a cloud, France too will take to the Stade de France turf with nagging doubts.
But that may not work in Ireland’s favour, according to D’Arcy.
“A French team that doesn’t perform one week usually comes out and plays a blinder the next week. We’ll hope to be in the same mode but we’re under no illusions. It’s very hard to win in Paris but the spirit is good and training went really well this week.”
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