French dirty tricks campaign backfires

THE quality of their rugby has have been a massive disappointment but there never really is a dull day with this Irish World Cup squad.

The French were at it again yesterday with a blistering attack in sports newspaper L’Equipe on Irish coach Eddie O’Sullivan. French manager Jo Maso touched a raw nerve with a poisonous piece on O’Sullivan which could really light the fuse as the two teams go into a potentially explosive clash at the Stade de France tonight.

The atmosphere in the Irish camp was ramped up by another notch in the same newspaper on Tuesday concerning the personal life of Irish out-half Ronan O’Gara. If it was part of a dirty tricks campaign – as I suggested on Wednesday – it may well have backfired. Ireland have clearly circled the wagons around O’Gara with O’Sullivan and skipper Brian O’Driscoll was quick to leap to his defence and rebut the allegations in the most forceful manner.

“There is a little bit of upset there about what was written in the French media about one of our players,” said O’Sullivan yesterday. “I’m upset about it and so is everybody else. I’m delighted the Irish media didn’t jump on that bandwagon. It just shows that in the Irish media, we have a much higher standard of integrity when it comes to sports journalism. I thought what happened in the French media was a disgrace.

“This has angered people more than upset them and it might be a good thing at the end of the day. We are in the lion’s den and for the French media to decide to go down that road two days before a game to me was, well, I won’t say the word I have in my head, but it was pretty annoying to say the least.

“It certainly goes in the motivational pot,” he said. “You can’t build your motivation on one thing. Lots of things motivate us; the prospect of a quarter-final is a motivation, the performance we aspire to and have reached earlier this year is a motivation knowing that if we deliver that performance, we’ll be there or thereabouts. You throw this extra on top of it and it adds fuel to the fire so motivation will not be a problem against France.”

However, Ireland need to have O’Gara at his imposing best if they are to have any chance of upsetting the odds tonight. Not alone has he been below par recently but his focus could easily be distracted given all the rumours that have been circulating about him. But he undoubtedly has the 100% support of his team mates and management and O’Sullivan is confident his performance will not be affect by all the hullabaloo.

“Ronan was a bit upset with what happened, an attack on him at a personal level which is totally unfounded as well,” he said.

“There’s no evidence of anything like that and it’s just very nasty stuff. But he’s a very tough individual. As long as I know him, he’s a guy who can focus better than anybody else I know. It’s not going to put him off and if anything it will make him more determined.”

Brian O’Driscoll and Ronan O’Gara first played for Ireland together against Scotland in 2000. A close friendship quickly developed between them and has been maintained and strengthened over the years. So it was with some emotion that O’Driscoll joined in the condemnation of the newspaper report.

“We’re a very tight knit group, we’ve been together for the most part for the last three or four years give or take one or two people and we’ve developed very strong friendships” he said. “And when you see a slur on someone’s personality and their private life and not on their sporting ability, you take it personally yourself.

“You wouldn’t wish that on anyone, let alone someone who’s in your own team, so as Eddie said, we’ll put that in the pot. We don’t forget easily.”

Speculation will continue about the timing of the piece. The newspaper’s defence is that the rumours began in Ireland and not in France and it would be difficult to refute that.

“If you were a cynic, you could say it was to try and knock things up in the build-up to the game, trying to throw a few sparks around the camp and unsettle us” mused O’Driscoll. “But we’re a bigger team than that and will not allow something as stupid and unfounded to shake us. It will galvanise us more than anything. It’s another reason why we can’t wait for this game to start.”