O’Connell: it’s the biggest game of the year for us

PAUL O’CONNELL’S value to the Munster cause has rarely been more apparent than the manner in which he skippered the side against the Ospreys on Friday night.

The side desperately needed a performance after the defeats by Connacht and Ulster and they got just that as the captain marshalled his forces as only he can with the result that saw them leave Swansea with the four points that bounced them back to the top of the Magners League table.

Consequently, they now go into tomorrow night’s all-important Heineken Cup clash with Sale Sharks with morale and self-belief back where they need to be. However, that is not to suggest that all is well with the side and their task will be made a whole lot more difficult should they earn the wrath of referee Nigel Owens, just as they have done with a series of officials over the past several months.

Owens knows Munster well — he refereed each of their final three knockout matches last season against Gloucester, Saracens and Toulouse — and one of O’Connell’s responsibilities will be to ensure that the Welshman isn’t given any reason to whistle them off the pitch, as one or two of his colleagues have seen fit to do over the past couple of months.

“There’s a lot of talk about going off your feet and what constitutes going off your feet,” mused O’Connell. “When you go off your feet carelessly, you get pinged. If you go off your feet cleaning someone out, you tend not to get pinged. You look at any ruck, you can give two or three penalties to either team for any number of things.

“It is something we need to be a little more clever on. It’s the careless, blatant, off your feet penalties that are being pulled and I don’t think it’s as bad as people are making out.”

O’Connell is pleased that referees speak a lot more to the players these days and give feedback as to what they want.

“As we’re jogging to a lineout, he might tell me what he wants and vice-versa and that’s not a bad thing,” he agreed. “On Friday, we have a very good ref in Nigel who referees well on intuition. He knows us very well, we know him very well, and I don’t foresee any problems.”

O’Connell doesn’t talk about the occasion unless he can avoid it for fear of being seen to blow his own trumpet. But few will forget the massive hit with which he and Donncha O’Callaghan et al blew the redoubtable Sebastian Chabal back a good 30 yards at a restart, one of the most inspirational moments in the history of Munster rugby.

That was three years ago when Munster scored four tries for a bonus point in a famous 31-9 victory. The captain claims he can “hardly remember the game” but believes they were somewhat different in the more recent clash of the sides at Edgeley Park last October. Along with the earlier game against Leinster, that represented Munster’s best performance of the season, yet O’Connell isn’t prepared to read too much into the 24-16 victory that left the Sharks bereft of even a bonus point.

“They’ve been very straight up and down over the last few weeks and it’s been very effective for them,” he claims. “They’ve been playing Tuilagi in the centre, where he’s been very effective, and Lobbe and Chabal, also, so they’ve been very straight up and down the field with a very good kicking game as well. Cueto has been playing great and they’ve upped their game from the last time we played them.

“I saw them lose to Bath, a game they should have won, and I think they’ve won all their games since, and beat London Irish, who are top of the league. So it seems that every January we end up taking on the best team in England and it’s making for a taller and taller order as well as, hopefully, a good night on Friday.”

Following some decidedly indifferent performances at Thomond Park, a theory is growing that it is no longer a fortress in that visiting teams, no longer intimidated by it, are actually looking forward to playing at the glittering new stadium.

“Results would show that we haven’t made it the fortress it once was,” O’Connell accepted. “When I look back at the guys I grew up watching, it was always about the players who took the field that made the place. The results that occurred were due to the honesty of the players and the respect they showed to the supporters who were paying the money.

“Maybe we haven’t had that in the last few months. It’s the biggest game of the year for us on Friday night. If the supporters don’t bring their A game and the players don’t bring their A game, we could be out of the competition.”

There is no doubt that Munster aren’t quite the same formidable outfit since the virtual elimination of the rolling maul since the introduction of the ELVs.

O’Connell says: “When they change the rules, you have to figure out new ways to play and it just doesn’t happen overnight. It was always a great way for us to take teams on, especially in the conditions we encountered in Limerick and Cork.

“You have to evolve with the rules. Those changes have been coming thick and fast over the past 10 or 12 years and Munster have always evolved with them.

“It’s no different now and we’ll evolve with this one as well.”