O’Gara: it’s just a step in the right direction

RONAN O’GARA’S vast international experience and his leadership role with Munster, made him the right man to address the Irish troops prior to the game against France.

He stressed the need for greater self belief and how they shouldn’t settle for just a decent performance. However, his words appeared to have fallen on deaf ears for more than half of Saturday’s helter-skelter encounter but eventually the message filtered through and Ireland departed Paris with their spirits appreciably lifted.

“We’ve been trying to get credibility back and so far we haven’t done that,” he said. “Today, although, we took a step in the right direction, this team badly needs a win. It’s been a long time since we’ve played well. I asked the players to be honest and I thought we were honest against France. Now, we need to kick on from here.”

It’s good to know that beating the likes of Italy doesn’t rank very high on the Richter Scale with Ireland’s senior players. Likewise, moral victories don’t count for much.

“It’s been a long time since we produced a satisfying performance like that,” mused O’Gara.

“A lot can happen in sport — you can only look after your own situation. At Munster, I’m used to winning and I expected to win today. We’re sore and a few of us are very disappointed. The fellas aren’t happy — we were beaten again in Paris and that’s the bottom line.”

Imagine the frustration O’Gara and his colleagues were suffering as they watched helplessly as the out of position Geordan Murphy was taken to the cleaners by Vincent Clerc for his remarkable three first-half tries.

Not that O’Gara blamed the right winger completely: “It was the first-half turnovers that killed us,” he said. “With one of them, we gave away seven points which was probably the difference in the end. We’re disappointed with that. We were 19-6 down at half time and it’s a big ask to come back from, but I knew that we’d have a good patch and we managed to score a couple of tries in the second half.”

Without mentioning him by name, O’Gara also referred to Murphy’s decision to kick ahead in the French 22 with time up. Retaining possession would have afforded the team some chance of bridging the six-point gap at that stage.

“We should never have let that ball go dead at the end,” he said. “It was a bad mistake. We had to keep hammering away because you are not going to score out wide in the last play of the game. We should have kept the ball in the forwards and stuck at it.

“We played well in the first half but gave away some soft tries. In the second half, it was incredible how quickly the French tired. We did perform but I’m not happy with a morale-boosting performance — I play sport to win. We’re our own worst enemies at times. We need to start believing in ourselves. There are some quality players in this team. The potential is there; we just need to start believing in ourselves and kick on.”

Nor was O’Gara going to flatter the French unduly:

“We knew if we could keep them within 10 points on 60 minutes we could close out the game. But when you concede 19 points in the first half, it’s too much. Heymans and Clerc are phenomenal players and that’s the quality you need. They scored 20 points between them. You have to admire their skill. They’re like Ronaldo at United — fantastic players.”

O’Gara’s admiration for captain Brian O’Driscoll has not waned: “we’ve been too flat recently and it was great to see Brian attacking the ball today. He likes the outside break but he’s a bull of a man and he took the ball on really well at times. We saw how good a player Brian O’Driscoll is. He kept them guessing.”