Fired up for Scarlets showdown

VETERANS of the trade like Peter Stringer have never lacked motivation when it comes to Heineken Cup day and that remains very much the same as Munster go into battle against the Llanelli Scarlets at Stradey Park this evening.

Having lost their two games to date, the Scarlets are probably already doomed in terms of reaching the quarter-finals of the competition and it will be very much the same for Munster if they don’t leave west Wales with at least four points. Furthermore, with several of their players, including Stringer, under extreme pressure for their Irish team places, there is even more at stake than usual.

There could be no better arena or any more significant occasion for Stringer to prove a point to Irish coach Eddie O’Sullivan, who dropped him from the team in the course of the World Cup. However, the scrumhalf insists that, for now, he is concentrating on the match itself and nothing more.

“My focus is purely on Munster,” he declared. “Genuinely there is nothing more on my mind. There’s a lot of pressure but we’re used to situations like this. It’s do or die for us and hopefully that’s when we’re at our best. Stradey is a place where we haven’t come away with a victory too often. They have a different focus having lost their two games but they’re always pretty dangerous and can score from anywhere. We have to be of the opinion that they’re fighting for their lives and that will make it even tougher for us.”

On the broader scale, Irish rugby is eagerly awaiting the review body’s report (what Stringer describes as the “great big exclusive”) on the World Cup debacle. As always where the game in this country is concerned, the rumours abound: this player and that player have blamed it all on Eddie O’Sullivan or whoever. Peter Stringer, however, suspects that the speculators and those hoping against hope that heads will roll may be disappointed.

“We had a good 12 weeks pre-season, everyone was buzzing, and we were really looking forward to getting out there,” he says. “But things didn’t go our way and people are now waiting for this big exclusive story to come out. And yet I think we went there with the right squad and a great bunch of lads. The spirit in the camp was as good as I’ve experienced in an Irish team.

“If there was something that stood out drastically, you could move on, but when you’re still searching to find what went wrong, where we could have improved, that’s why I suppose it leaves us with vacant thoughts as to why things didn’t happen for us. But there is nothing to pinpoint. All these rumours were flying around but we were in a bubble and the mood was good within it and we tried to distance ourselves from it all.”

Few could blame Stringer for resenting the way he was ditched by O’Sullivan in a tournament that meant so much to him and after all he had contributed to the success of several Irish teams over the past number of years. He could have sulked — but that’s a long way from the true nature of the man.

“For me personally, it was obviously a difficult time,” he admits. “Not being involved at all and being distant from the team was a scenario I hadn’t seen myself in. You’re not togging out and you’re staying in your suit and not getting into your gear… on the first week, it was quite difficult.

“But I made a conscious decision to keep my head down and keep working away. I didn’t want to be moping around the place and affecting my attitude going into training and to the detriment of the squad. I’ve seen lads over the years who weren’t in the squad having a lax attitude and I didn’t want to be that person, to be seen as messing around and not being focused on things to do.”

ONE rumour doing the rounds regarded an alleged clash between Stringer and Brian O’Driscoll after the Ireland-Georgia game in which the scrum-half’s pass to the captain early in the second half was intercepted by Georgi Shkinin. It led directly to a seven pointer for the underdogs that very nearly inspired them to one of the greatest shocks in the history of the game. A few minutes later, Peter was hauled ashore and hasn’t even sat on the bench since, never mind put on the green jersey.

“You hear these things and just laugh at them at this stage,” says Stringer.

“Basically, I didn’t hear any of the rumours about me until I got back. The level of rumours was ridiculous. It was laughable at times. I don’t know if they affected the level of performance. I can’t speak for everybody else. From my own point of view, thankfully, I didn’t hear any rumours about me and so I had nothing to worry me in my own head. You’d have to ask other guys if they affected them personally. I don’t know.”

OTHERS see things in much the same light as Stringer. Perhaps, as the latest batch of rumours would have you believe, they are keeping their powder dry until the publication of the Genesis Report. That remains to be seen. But they will also all tell you that getting back home to the provinces and a whole new scene sat very easily with them. Stringer is no exception.

“I’m enjoying my rugby, there’s no better place to come back to,” he tells you with a wry smile. “There was a lot of slagging with Axel (Anthony Foley) the main culprit. He texted me to say he’d have the Shannon calls ready for me if I wanted to play a bit of club rugby. Rather than having people tip toeing around the subject, guys were honest and that’s want you want.”

Stringer’s clash with Eoin Reddan in last month’s Heineken Cup game against Wasps ended just about 50/50 which presumably means in effect that Stringer needs to step up another gear if he is to regain Eddie O’Sullivan’s confidence in good time for the Six Nations opener against Italy at Croke Park on February 2.

And yet he doesn’t believe the somewhat new scenario in which he finds himself will change his approach to the task.

“It’s been said to me over the years that I didn’t have any real competition for the number nine jersey with Ireland and I dismissed that kind of talk as ridiculous,” he declared. “If I’m lucky enough to be playing for Ireland, I know there’s always a guy on the subs bench waiting to get on that pitch ahead of me and I always see that as motivation to keep my standards as high as I possibly can.

“Nothing has changed because of what happened at the World Cup. Of course, there’s a bit of hurt there but with regard to my attitude towards the game and my professionalism, it’s the number nine jersey I want and I still want it. I just have to work as hard as I always have and to keep doing things I’m used to doing and not try to be a different person or a different player.

“People find it difficult to understand how I could be friendly with another scrumhalf. I have genuinely got on well with Eoin (Reddan) in the past and that’s not going to change.

“Because he was picked ahead of me doesn’t make him a lesser person in my eyes and the same with Isaac Boss. It’s about myself and nobody else and that’s the way it has always been. I have to get motivation from within myself and not look to other people, just try and keep that same motivation whether I’m in the jersey or not.”