Few surprises thrown up as Eddie plays it safe
The elevation of Ronan O’Gara to the captaincy for the first time in his 82nd appearance wasn’t a major shock after how well he has performed the task throughout the Heineken Cup campaign with Munster. However Eddie O’Sullivan admitted he faced a tough task in deciding whether Paul O’Connell or O’Gara should lead the side out in place of the injured Brian O’Driscoll.
Explained O’Sullivan: “I weighed this up on the basis that Paul has been out for a long time and has only one game under his belt.
“I want him to focus on his own game, lead the pack, take some pressure and basically get on with his own performance.”
Asked if the added responsibility might impinge on O’Gara, O’Sullivan replied: “There was no evidence with his captaincy of Munster that it has done so. He’s a very experienced player, it’s not his first Test game for Ireland and he’ll be well capable of managing the team.
“I don’t have any fears in that area at all.”
O’Sullivan also claimed that O’Connel was happy with the arrangement and spoke about the celebrated second-row forward’s shortage of game time.
“Paul’s happy enough. He’s just back and has very few games under his belt. I think it’s a good division of labour from that point of view. Paul will focus on his game and make sure the pack are up and running and let Ronan look after all the other stuff that has to be done in the lead-up.
“No more than Paul, Brian O’Driscoll, Simon Easterby and Antony Foley who have all captained the team in recent years, Ronan has been a senior player in the squad which means he has had to fill the unofficial role of captaincy on the pitch at times, he’s had to talk in the team room and on the training pitch. It’s not a massive leap for him to take the captaincy. He was delighted when I asked him and it’s a huge honour.
“He’s been a leader in his own right without the official tag of being captain like a lot of other fellows do. The fact that he’s wearing the captain’s armband this weekend won’t have any effect on him even if he’s in a position where he’ll be making more decisions.”
O’Gara’s appointment excepted, the announcement of the team to play England provided little to excite or enthuse over. Those who would like to have seen, for once, a sense of adventure and excitement in an Eddie O’Sullivan selection were again doomed to disappointment. Geordan Murphy is recalled at fullback, Rob Kearney switches to the wing and Shane Horgan to the centre.
The coach has made positional changes galore but only one in personnel in spite of the dismal performance on Saturday. Once Murphy proved his fitness — and it will be tomorrow at the earliest that he is confirmed in the starting line-up — O’Sullivan had no qualms about restoring him to fullback.
He admitted that he “toyed with the idea” of playing Luke Fitzgerald in the centre before concluding that while “in time he could play in any position in an Irish backline, he was still lacking in the necessary experience, especially at 13 at this level. On balance, you have to be fair to him as well”.
O’Sullivan’s position came up for discussion once again and as of now, there is clearly no way he has any intention of falling on his sword.
He quoted a statistic that “in the four years between the World Cups of 2003 and ‘07, Ireland are second only to France in Six Nations wins. They have won only two games more than us.”
Trouble is that neither of those two World Cups went particularly well and neither has recent form been anything up to the required standard.
When it was put to him that he had been in the job for six years and two more in a subsidiary role and that he and the team might have grown stale together, he wasn’t having any of it.
“The team has changed and I’m probably the only constant here in that time. Players come, players go, combinations change, new players come in, other players retire. That’s an ongoing thing. You can’t say the team has gone stale. It’s a different team on Saturday than it was a year ago. So the question then is, can I continue to keep the team fresh?
“That’s the challenge for me and there will be varying opinions on that. My position is that I’m very happy to get on with the job and I believe I can. It’s like the ups and downs of a business... when things go well, it’s great, when they don’t go so well, those kinds of question crop up.
“That’s understandable. As long as I’m doing the job and I’m comfortable doing it, and the players are happy, that’s the key issue.
“I’m not hurt by all the criticism. Some of it is right, some is wrong, some is informed, some is ill-informed. That’s the nature of the business.
“If you’re going to get hung up on that kind of stuff, you’re going to have a pretty miserable life. This is not my favourite part of the job. I’d much prefer to be out on the pitch with the lads. But this is part of the job and the spin-off is that you do get criticised. I can’t get hung up on whether I’m being praised or criticised.”
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