Ireland desperate to up the ante

SUGGESTIONS Georgia may make sweeping changes for tomorrow’s World Cup clash with Ireland and the continued preference for Rory Best over Jerry Flannery at hooker were the major issues at yesterday’s press conference involving the Irish coaching staff — minus Eddie O’Sullivan.

“I don’t think it makes much difference what kind of team they put out against us,” claimed assistant coach Niall O’Donovan. “We have to go with what we saw against Argentina and what we saw during the summer. No matter what side they put out, they’ll be physical.

“The guys they have in reserve are just as big and as physical as the guys who started the other day. They’re all very physical. They took on Argentina and won a lot of the battles. They probably tired towards the end and started losing a few set pieces. But for 78% of the game, they were well in it. They were physical around the contact areas, rucks and breakdowns and looked to have a very good maul and a good maul defence.

“They may well pose huge problems for us up front.”

It’s been a week in which the Irish squad has come in for understandable criticism after the Namibian display.

“The focus has been on cutting down the mistakes that caused us to play so poorly last week,” said O’Donovan. “The emphasis has been on upping the skills levels and clean- out techniques at the breakdown. Against Namibia, the scrum was okay in the sense that we turned over six of their scrum balls and that’s always a good day for us. We had 75% of the line-out ball spot on. But there were a few crooked throws and it looked like there was miscommunication between Jerry (Flannery) and the jumpers when he came on in the second half. If we can get up to 75% of it right, there’s no reason why we can’t get the remaining 25% right this weekend by upping the concentration levels.”

O’Donovan admitted he was aware of the criticism regarding the continuing preference for Rory Best ahead of Flannery, who most believe would add a lot more fire and passion to the side.

He replied: “There’s no doubt that Jerry is doing very well. He is a superb player and explosive around the park. But Rory hasn’t done a whole lot wrong. He was no different to anyone else on the park.

“The consensus was that everybody got a second go and, yeah, Jerry is putting pressure on Rory. Rory had a great Six Nations and one game last week when he wasn’t up to par really isn’t a reason to drop him.”

While the Irish team that flopped so disappointingly against Namibia have, to a man, put up their hands collectively and accepted the rap, the pressure has also been building on the coaching staff.

Not alone is Eddie O’Sullivan, head coach, but he has O’Donovan as assistant, supported in turn by skills coach Brian McLaughlin (a former Belfast school master), one time Great Britain Rugby League international Graham Steadman and Mark Tainton — who set all kinds of scoring records in his days with Bristol.

It wasn’t just the players who had to examine themselves closely after the Namibia fiasco!

“We meet on a daily basis and there was nothing extraordinary about anything we did since Sunday. The huge concentration is on ourselves and getting ourselves ready. We went through all the various parts of play that we fell down on last week and just tried to rectify it this week in training.”

Much has been made of Ireland’s inability to clear out ruck ball last Sunday with suggestions that the IRB’s warning about dangerous use of the boot might have a lot to do with that.

O’Donovan wasn’t for using that factor as an excuse.

“Maybe that’s part of it because you do have to be very careful now with the amount of cameras in use,” he mused.

“A basic rucking technique could be seen as using the foot but I wouldn’t use that to explain what happened. I think we just weren’t physical or explosive enough around the contact area. If the possession is slowed for a fraction of a second, it spoils the way we want to play.”

If there was a hint of excuses yesterday, it came from McLaughlin who pointed to the number of Tri Nations games the southern hemisphere teams had during the summer in contrast to the Six Nations sides.

He insisted: “The more match practice we have, the better we will become. I honestly believe the work we’ve done this week in adding more aggression to our technique will solve that problem. The more we practice, the more we play, the better we will become.”