We’re united under Kidney, declares Fitzgerald

LUKE FITZGERALD, eminently likeable guy that he is, tends to give away next to nothing in interviews, so it pays to sit up and take notice when his replies begin to stretch beyond the cursory few sentences.

So it was this week when the conversation turned to the contrast between Ireland’s stunted form in the November internationals against New Zealand and Argentina and their more exuberant displays in the opening two rounds of the Six Nations.

“I thought the criticism was quite harsh on the team after the autumn internationals,” said the Leinster back. “The (new) coaching staff hadn’t had that time to get us ready for them and we hadn’t really got used to each other. I don’t think that there was a total understanding of what the coaches were trying to get across to us in terms of how they wanted us to do things in certain areas of the park. I’m not too sure too if they understood how we wanted to play the game.

“That’s very important, to have that understanding. We’ve built that. We had some really productive meetings at Christmas. We didn’t do much on the pitch, just had an awful lot of meetings and it cleared the air.

“We came out of those meetings with an awful lot of focus and an understanding of what we wanted to achieve on the pitch — from both perspectives. I think that’s really helped us.”

What is undeniable is the fact that the team is playing as if with a weight lifted from its shoulders, as if released from the rigidity of a tactical or self-imposed straitjacket.

The absence of other factors such as IRB standings and the World Cup seedings should also be appreciated but Fitzgerald doesn’t chime with the view that the players have been let off some leash that may have been in place under Eddie O’Sullivan or, initially, Declan Kidney.

“I’ve never really felt that we’ve been shackled by a coach. The players have to take a certain amount of criticism... that’s maybe why we weren’t clicking as much in the autumn internationals. There’s a good unity in the squad now, good fight and we’ve had some good results. We had two really good results in the autumn and the New Zealand game didn’t click for us.

“If we’d done some things a bit cleverer, defended a bit better, we might have been in that game and it would have been tighter. I think the squad has been going pretty good for a while.”

The more Fitzgerald talks, the more it becomes apparent that he doesn’t share many of the accepted wisdoms surrounding rugby in general. The least surprising of his statements is the assertion that England are still a force to be reckoned with.

The 2003 world champions return to Croke Park for the second and final time next week and, engrossed as Fitzgerald was when taking in their first visit from the stands, he dismisses talk of how Ireland could again harness that energy or how England could feed off the loss. “It was a great day out but we’ll be trying to forget that. Maybe they’ll be trying to use it as motivation. I don’t think there’s any need for extra motivation in an international match but I suppose it couldn’t harm them.”

Fitzgerald’s first-hand experience of Ireland-England fixtures has been limited but he possesses a treasure trove of memories that stretch back to 1994 when Simon Geoghegan scored his memorable try at Twickenham.

The player to make the biggest impression on him in those days was Jeremy Guscott who spent 10 years illuminating Twickenham with his sumptuous running style and electric pace and Fitzgerald went some way to tracing his footsteps last year when appearing as a replacement at the RFU’s headquarters.

“It didn’t faze me. Any young guy who has any aspirations of going further in rugby, those are the occasions you want to play in. I don’t see why you should be shackled by fear. It’s much more important to relish those occasions and feed off the energy you get.”