Ultimate warrior

HE may not have been ferried on the chariots which brought the northern hemisphere’s first World Cup winners home, but Paul O’Connell could still have floated back to Ireland on a cloud — were he so inclined.

The 6 ft 5 inch, 17 stone, Young Munster man was such an all-round hit in Australia that he was a veritable shoo-in on everybody's "team of the tournament" and had scarcely unpacked his bags in Limerick than he was picking up the Texaco Irish rugby player of the year award.

Many fine prospects have drowned without sight under such an accolade. Not O'Connell. And not with the 'earthy' views of his Munster team-mates to deal with. He was back in the red jersey on Friday night helping Munster defeat Cardiff in the Celtic League, immediately rushing back to Limerick to present an autographed Munster jersey to one of his great admirers, Dr Denis O'Keeffe, who was celebrating his 80th birthday party in Limerick Lawn Tennis Club. On Saturday, he drove back to Cork with his dad, Mick, who played his rugby with Sunday's Well and Young Munster, who were paired in an AIB League Division Two game at Musgrave Park. Naturally, O'Connell turned heads and while the plaudits are much appreciated, he knows as he looks back on the World Cup that Ireland should have done a whole lot better.

"I'm more disappointed than ever now," he admits with a resigned shrug of those massive shoulders. "I keep looking back at the French game a week after they played us and how they capitulated against England. Michalak had the game of a lifetime against us and then faded against England, his kicking wasn't great whereas against us everything went over the black spot."

O'Connell is still haunted by the two soft tries conceded to the French in the first-half in the Telstra Dome, the first touched down by Olivier Magne as early as the third minute and the intercept score accepted by Christophe Dominici at a stage when the Irish cause still wasn't a dead one.

"If we had gone in 15-0 down instead of 27-0, we were still in with a chance because you can come back from that. Look at it like this. We gave away two silly tries that you'd never give away when playing well. Take away those tries and we were still in it."

Irish coach Eddie O'Sullivan has shipped some flak for playing his top men in all five matches and that as a consequence some had lost their edge when it came to the quarters. O'Connell has no time for that argument: "Matches are the best fitness you can get. We were living in hotels, no family obligations, nothing like that, Monday to Friday, it was recovery, recovery, recovery ... ice baths, pool sessions, resting up well. It was perfect. This thing about us being flat because of the number of games we played isn't true at all. Four weeks in a row, we would have been flying fit, and recovered very well, so I don't think we did anything wrong there."

Like so many others, O'Connell is at a loss to explain why Ireland should have performed so well against Australia but failed to come out with the same zest and self belief against the French. He muses: "Everything seemed to work for them and nothing worked for us. When that happens, teams can rack up a score. New Zealand put 55 points on Australia in the Tri Nations this year and in the World Cup, Australia walloped them out the gate. That's the fine line that exists."

For a young man who turned 24 as recently as October 10th, it won't come as any surprise that Paul loved his time at the World Cup and recalls happily: "It was brilliant. The craic, the gang of players, the backroom staff, the supporters, my family was there, yeah, it was great fun. Sharing rooms is gas ... we mixed up the rooms from week-to-week ... some guys have little quirks ... by and large, we were with guys whose little quirks you could put up with ... nothing to do with provinces sticking together, Anthony Horgan and Malcolm O'Kelly roomed together all the time because they were the 'skunks', the smellies.

"Then there's the craic, we had some great characters out there, Guy Easterby, Donnacha, Rog and these guys, messing, and leading the way. I'm more inclined to sit back and watch."

PAUL demonstrates in a practical way why the different geographical backgrounds of the various players makes little or no difference when they come together with a common cause. "When you go away to places like Poland, Bilbao, Perth, Tonga, Samoa, that's when you learn to get over your petty differences, if you don't get on with the guy next to you, then you're in trouble," he insists.

"By the end of it all, we were like a club side. Very close-knit. Everyone knows each other inside out and we were very lucky we all got on well. Australia was a great country to visit and the stadiums were fantastic."

O'Connell may have been one of the tournament's finds, but he is intensely self-critical. "It went okay but I still made a lot of mistakes. Personal performance doesn't matter in a team situation. If you asked Woody about his personal satisfaction, he'd probably bite the face off you. It's not about persons, it's about the team, and the team didn't deliver against France.

"I've got to improve defensively, I've got to get more yards out of my ball-carrying, I need to get my fitness up, to be operating at the Jonny Wilkinson level," he pronounces. "I think his example has shocked everyone. Dunners [Donnacha O'Callaghan] is like that in trying to get there as well. I know I don't sleep enough during the day which is a massive part of being a professional rugby player. You're supposed to catch a couple of hours during the day because if you're doing weights and you sleep, that's when your body recovers. I need to do more about recovery after games.

"Rehabbing injuries, there's a million things. A hundred metre sprinter has a couple of things to work on. A rugby player has one hundred and one things to think about speed, power, analyse opposition line-outs on video, analyse your own line-outs, work hard on recovery, rehab all your different injuries, work on your diet. There are hardly enough hours in the day, the better you become at time management, the more of these things you can knock off."

Fortunately O'Connell and his team-mates haven't had long to dwell on what might have been in Australia. Munster head for Bourgoin tomorrow knowing how important victory is to kick-start another serious challenge on the coveted Heineken Cup.

O'Connell may be only 24 but he is now one of the senior members of the side, especially with the departure of Mick Galwey and before him John Langford, and much will depend on his second-row partnership with Donnacha O'Callaghan.

He ruefully reflects on how he dropped two balls in Friday night's game against Cardiff and puts it down to ring-rustiness after a three week lay-off. He says they are now trying to get used to each other again and was generally pleased with the performance, accepting that they were better against the wind in the first-half but that "even in the second, we got a few better patterns going, played more continuity rugby which is where Alan Gaffney is trying to get us to go.

"I have good memories of France, beating Stade Francais and Castres. I enjoy playing over there, especially with the Munster pack."

There is a legitimate fear among Munster followers that the side lacks cover in certain areas, not least the back-row where Alan Quinlan and Denis Leamy are long-term injury victims. Again, O'Connell is positive: "Teams change. We've been lucky that ours hasn't changed very much. We had Marcus (Horan) coming in for 'Claw' (Peter Clohessy) and that was seamless enough as Marcus has been around for years. We've had a steady squad since before I came along. The lads have stayed with Munster whereas the clubs in England seem to have had different squads to work with from year to year."

Paul was taken aback by a suggestion that he might be a marked man after all he has achieved in the past few years and especially in the World Cup. He considered it "a funny question" actually, but elaborated:

"The only way you can be a marked man in the second-row is in line-outs. I suppose teams will be defending as hard as ever, everything is video-analysed and teams know what you're going to do almost before you go out there. It's just a question of how efficiently you do it. First of foremost, a good team can track you and follow you. Line-outs are complicated and they're getting more and more complicated."

It would be perfectly natural for people to believe Munster's spirit might be down just a little after all the narrow defeats over the past four years. "There are a few more characters, after surfacing that we didn't know about before we went away and that has kept it fresh and vibrant. There's huge ambition in the side and that is proved by the signing of Christian Cullen. You have guys like Anthony Foley, whom I guarantee won't be giving up until he has won the European Cup. No, the losses make you hungrier if anything," said O'Connell.

So what's missing? "The belief, maybe. It's only been one or two point losses in the big games. We must have the belief that we're good enough to win the tight games. I'm sure that belief is there. In fact, I'm certain it is."