It’s back to basics for D’Arcy

By EVERY Irish rugby player is well aware of the extent of the criticism Eddie O’Sullivan has been taking over the past few weeks, with the World Cup squad stumbling from one bad game to another.

On the surface at any rate, O’Sullivan seems to have the full support of his players and last night, he received another endorsement, this time from Gordon D’Arcy, one of the senior members of the side.

“I would never envy a coach — no matter what sport he is in — soccer, rugby, Gaelic football,” said the talented but under-achieving number 12. “The only thing Eddie wants to hear from us is that we are 100% behind him. Every decision he makes is the right one as far as we’re concerned, everything he has done so far has been the right thing.”

Little room for argument there. Unfortunately, D’Arcy has been one of the disappointments of the side so far and the failure of his midfield axis with Brian O’Driscoll has been one of the chief reasons why the side has failed to measure up. Both were outstanding in the Six Nations, but they have failed to click in the intervening few months.

“I’m not making clean breaks and I’m not getting the yards that I normally do,” he accepted. “I don’t know why that’s happening. Maybe it’s the quality of the defences we have encountered. It’s been very frustrating for everybody right across the board. A lot of people probably aren’t happy at how they played at the weekend and the excuses are running out and more importantly, the time is running out. I don’t feel any greater pressure because I’m not making the line breaks. It’s part of my job and what I do and what I’m usually very good at. So I have to get back to the basics and do the homework with Brian and Ronan and find those extra yards and half breaks.”

D’Arcy realises full well the Pumas will work harder than ever on their defensive strategy during the week in the knowledge that preventing Ireland from scoring four tries will send them into the quarter-finals and possibly, the semis.

“Argentina are in the driving seat and it’s for them to lose,” said the 28-year-old Wexford man. “And while it’s a contradiction in terms, it’s also there for us to win. When we have the ball, we have to do everything right and play the game of our lives. Argentina are very aggressive, a lot of line speed, they come up in your face very quickly. What we’ll aim for is a line bust and if we get in behind them, we must be clinical and not panic and put the ball through phases or put it over the line.”

This would be a tough game for Ireland to win in the first place but to have to make four touch downs against the only side in the competition not to have conceded a try so far makes it Mission Impossible. The players of course can’t, and indeed must not, look at it in those terms.

“We’re going to get two scoring opportunities in each half and we have to take them,” D’Arcy rationalised. “The danger is that you go out from the kick-off trying to score four tries and you end up losing. The way to beat Argentina is to put them through phases and take your scoring opportunities.

“They have a very hard, physical defence and you need to keep turning them around, keep going through phases and they get a bit narrow. That’s when you have to take your chances out wide. But if you attempt straight away, to go through them or around them, they’re very good, very solid with a first rate defence like all the best teams in the competition.”

Many will be sceptical when

D’Arcy claims that “we have enough game breakers in this team to create tries” simply because we haven’t seen any evidence of this for some time.

But with a tad more realism, he added: “We haven’t played well as a team and that’s a group responsibility and something we have to look at. We’re still getting over the nuances of the French game and haven’t yet gone into the specific tactics for next weekend — apart from having a general overview of what we want to do.”

One of the highlights will be the head to head between D’Arcy and O’Driscoll and their Leinster team-mate Felipe Contepomi and his brother Manuel. Gordon agrees Contepomi “is one of three massive players for them along with Juan Martin Hernandez and Augustin Pichot. Pretty much any game Felipe plays, he either has something good or bad to do with it — and let’s hope it’s the latter this time.”