O’Sullivan’s patience pays dividends

ONCE again, a born and bred Munsterman came into the team in time of need and did the business at Thomond Park yesterday.

Just as Darragh Hurley proved his mettle in the recent Heineken Cup games against Cardiff Blues, John O’Sullivan came up trumps in yesterday’s Magners League clash with Leinster at Thomond Park, when pressed into service at number six in place of the suspended Alan Quinlan.

And nobody was more pleased with the Traleeman’s performance than his captain Paul O’Connell.

“It’s very hard to sit there year on year and not to get your chance,” he said.

“Usually, when that chance comes your way, you get it in a depleted Celtic League side. We always think it’s great for a guy to get his chance with a full team and I think John did really well. Some guys might drop their head when they don’t make it through, but John probably rates himself highly enough that he has kept at it and kept showing up for training full of beans. And it’s paid off.

As for the game itself, O’Connell reasoned that “it got our Celtic League campaign back on track. It was great to beat Leinster after losing disappointingly to them at Lansdowne Road earlier in the campaign.

“Everyone knows what goes with a Munster-Leinster game and we have a lot of respect for them. So any time we beat them, we’re thrilled. Our work rate is always there but sometimes this year we haven’t always played with our usual intelligence. We had a lot of luck and took our luck and used our chances and, as usual, Rog’s kicking was outstanding. When we got down there, we kept the scoreboard ticking over.”

In terms of the penalty try awarded to Munster early in the game, O’Connell accepted it was difficult to interpret what had happened because he was buried in the scrum, although he did insist that “we were trying to scrummage straight and we felt they we running around.

“Obviously at the time I was thrilled, I might look at it later and think we were very lucky. We made a conscious decision at half time to tighten it up with Frankie [Sheahan] in the bin and it worked for us. Things clicked into place for us.”