Ireland can overcome O’Connell loss: Stringer

MAKE no mistake about it, even though his replacement, Mick O’Driscoll, is a hell of a player, the loss of Paul O’Connell to the Irish second-row against Italy on Saturday is colossal.

Along with team captain Brian O’Driscoll and out-half Ronan O’Gara, O’Connell is the most instantly recognised of the current high-flying Irish side and widely acknowledged as the best in his position. Few have a better view of O’Connell’s all-round effectiveness than scrum-half Peter Stringer.

And fewer have a better appreciation of his value.

“He’s a key player for us, a key leader in the squad. He will be a huge loss from his organisational point of view and for his leadership qualities.”

The timing of the withdrawal is worse especially as it is through their powerful pack that Italy will be attempting to stymie the Irish hopes at winning their first championship outright in over 20 years.

With his prowess in lineout, scrum, ruck and maul, his pace, power and raw aggression in defence and attack, O’Connell would have been to the forefront in taking on that challenge.

A broken thumb suffered against the Scots last weekend, however means O’Connell is gone.

A loss, says his scrum-half, but let’s move on. “We have a guy coming in, Micko (O’ Driscoll) who is extremely intelligent and when it comes to lineouts he’ll boss that situation. Different guys call the lineouts depending on how many are in, but he’ll be one of the main guys calling defences, calling the attacking lineouts.

‘‘He’s put in an awful lot of work and even though he’s only been on the fringes with Munster and with Ireland he is fully aware of what needs to be done. He’s a good guy to have to step in.”

With or without the talismanic O’Connell, Ireland were always going to need a huge improvement on last week’s error-strewn display against Scotland if they are to win the match, and in doing so, overcome the current scoring differential between themselves and France, to claim the championship.

For Stringer and his team-mates, that is the real challenge. Injury was always going to be a factor in this tournament and there is nothing you can do about that. Performance, however, is a different matter. “We had analysed Scotland. Eddie (O’Sullivan) came up with a gameplan, we all rowed in behind it, practiced it in training and tried to implement it as best we could.

“It was effective in (countering) the way Scotland defend, the way they’re negative at rucks, try to slow ball, but basic errors crept into our game which hadn’t been there the week before. Guys were going for off-loads that maybe weren’t on and were forcing it a small bit.

“Those simple errors that crept in are the things that we must knock out of our game. The Italians in particular thrive on loose ball like that, you’d be playing into their hands if you kept it that loose. It’s about tidying up our mistakes from the last day, being patient, playing basic rugby, keeping the ball and frustrating them.

“The Scots were effective in slowing our ball, legally or illegally, were quite negative and didn’t allow us play. We’ve got to set out a platform in the first 15 minutes, dominate them, ensure we get quick ball, not rely on anyone but ourselves to deal with that. Ultimately there’s a championship at stake, we’ve got 80 minutes to go out and prove we’re capable of winning this, go out and be ruthless enough to get quick ball, not let anyone stand in our way.”

Speaking of which, there’s a memory of a certain Alessandro Troncon, Italian scrum-half. Four years ago in the final minutes of another Six-Nations encounter, Troncon dropped Peter with an uppercut that would have done justice to Rocky Marciano.

“Yerra I deserved it,” laughs Stringer. “I was pulling on his jersey a small bit and he reacted, swung out, landed. To this day I’m slagged about it by the lads. My outstanding memory of it is when I was coming off – it was near the end of the game, I was down for a few seconds, felt okay but they decided to take me off anyway – Claw and Gaillimh were both already on the sideline (Peter Clohessy and Mick Galwey, veterans of that team). Normally after something like that you’d expect fellas to say – Jesus, are you alright? But as I walked over the two of them were in stitches.”

He probably won’t be trading punches with Troncon Saturday, but will he be taking him on around the fringes, trying to exploit the veteran’s obvious lack of pace?

“You’ve got to be intelligent about it,” he says, “You can’t go in now thinking — yeah, that’s what I’m going to do. You’ve got to look at where the Italians are strong. If we get quick ball you look up and if the break is on, you try it, but with the threat we have out wide, if it’s on to spread it you do that.

‘‘It’s an impossible thing to predict now. You attack where the space is, analyse that as best you can on the day, and that’s the mindset in every single game. Where there’s space anywhere on the pitch, that’s where you attack.”

It’s been a real up-and-down season for Ireland. The loss of Brian O’Driscoll and Stringer himself was felt in the loss against France, then we had the heroics against England a couple of weeks later, followed by the disappointing performance in pipping a poor Scottish side by just a point last weekend, albeit with the considerable consolation of the Triple Crown. What of Rome now, what’s the attitude? “Obviously there’s an opportunity to win the championship, guys are aware of that, but you can’t get carried away. It’s a tough job to go to Italy but obviously it’s going to be a massive occasion with all the Irish support. We’ve got to go in with the mindset of looking to win the game, first and foremost. If we go in trying to score points straight away, throwing the ball everywhere, we’re into a losing battle.”