“It’s just a big lump of concrete but at half five on a Saturday evening, it’s a lot different”

PAUL O’CONNELL has discovered every conceivable way of getting into Thomond Park since he first played there with Ard Scoil Rís.

He has accompanied his parents Michael and Sheila; he has arrived in the school bus, the Young Munster team bus, the Munster team bus — and even scuttled in over the perimeter wall to watch a Heineken Cup game!

So he should know his way around the place better than most, and no doubt that will be a help, however small, as he leads his Munster side into one of the biggest of all their confrontations — tomorrow’s game against Leicester Tigers — at the soon-to-be remodelled stadium. While he knows better than most that it isn’t one of the most salubrious spots on earth, he still has a lot of respect for what it stands for.

Many of the side’s fanatical supporters are extremely fearful Leicester might steal the side’s proud unbeaten home record, all the more so because of what happened in Geneva last Sunday, when Munster tried things clearly beyond them.

But O’Connell maintains the side is still equal to the task of coping with England’s finest.

“The big thing in Irish rugby now is that we’re working on our skills all the time,” he pointed out.

“We were eager to show them off against Bourgoin and we were probably a small bit too loose at times. But we attacked space well, Lifeimi Mafi played well again, Barry Murphy was always threatening, Shaun Payne was excellent as usual. They were the little bits that came through. We kept saying to each other, let’s keep trying things, let’s keep playing. If space is on, you have to go for it.

“This time, we’ll play whatever is required on the night. When you play the top teams in the competition — which Leicester are — it’s about playing error-free rugby, not giving teams the chance to capitalise on your errors. If space is there, we’ll be aiming to attack it, if it’s tight, we’ll keep it tight but no matter what we do, we’ll be trying to cut down on the errors.”

O’Connell readily agreed that a repeat of Geneva against a clinical side like Leicester will cost points — and “we know they won’t concede too many either”.

“You can’t play the same game plan every week. Trying different things is good for our game. But it’s Saturday evening, final game in Thomond Park, 5.30pm kick-off, top English team. We’re not going to be playing a high-risk game.”

O’Connell accepts that some day, Munster’s unbeaten run at Thomond Park will come to an end. The players keep telling themselves they don’t want to be on the team that loses for the first time — “a kind of perverse motivation that works for us”.

The Munster camp is anxious this particular occasion should avoid comparisons with the famous games against Gloucester and Sale Sharks, the captain stressing that unlike their predecessors, the Tigers must win to stay in the competition.

As for Thomond Park, O’Connell acknowledges it’s had a huge influence on his career. He proudly points out that the advent of the professional game has seen many players leave their native place to seek rewards elsewhere but that is far from the case in Munster.

“Thomond Park and Musgrave Park have given us the chance to represent who we are and where we come from,” he stresses.

“I think that makes you a better player. Of course I have many memories of Thomond Park. I scored a hat-trick of tries here in a junior schools’ cup match for Ard Scoil against St Clements but the amount of running I had to do to get them hardly amounted to more than two yards.”

He ruefully shakes his head at missing the miracle match against Gloucester: “I was in the crowd with friends, and no, it wasn’t THAT day,” a smiling reference to the quarter-final in 2001 against Biarritz when as a young, promising member of the squad, he was slipped a ticket by Declan Kidney.

They were like gold dust at the time so he passed the ticket on to his dad and joined the sprightly youngsters who clambered over the wall on the “far” side and watched the action free of charge. How times have changed.

“I was injured at the time of the Gloucester game and feeling very down and thinking we were out of the competition,” he recalled. “The boys pulled out this amazing performance and by the time the injury came around, we were still in the competition. There have been a lot of great days.

“The ground as we know it is nothing spectacular to look at. It’s pure Munster, I suppose. It’s not a massive stadium just as there are no real stars in the team. It’s just a big lump of concrete but at half five on a Saturday evening, it’s a lot different. The big thing with the crowd being so near the pitch is that they’re standing. Even at the Millennium Stadium, the crowd is close to the pitch but the seats go back and are fairly shallow. When the people are standing, they seem a small bit closer and it improves the atmosphere.”