Cool hand Luke biding his time

LUKE FITZGERALD is one of world rugby’s classiest players yet has not managed to hold down a place in his favourite position with either club or country.

He is a certain to make the Irish team against Australia at Croke Park on Sunday week but looks set to once again wear the number 11 jersey in his 12th international.

Since his schooldays at Blackrock College, Fitzgerald has preferred full-back to any other position but the 22-year-old’s versatility has enabled his senior coaches Michael Cheika at Leinster and Eddie O’Sullivan and Declan Kidney with Ireland to play him mainly on the left wing and on occasion in the centre. In those roles he has enjoyed incredible success with province and country and capped an incredible 2009 by touring with the Lions.

But he still dreams of that number 15 jersey.

“My favourite position is full-back,” he declared unequivocally. “For some reason, no one wants to play me there. There’s a serious amount of competition for the full-back spot and I’ve just got to be patient and try and force myself in there if I can. The real challenge for me on the wing is to get touches on the ball, to get involved in the game, because I think I can impact the game the more I touch the ball. I would probably consider myself an outside centre but there’s a certain number 13 who is immovable from there and nobody could argue with that.

“So I see my versatility as a positive in one sense of getting an appreciation of the different challenges associated with those positions but I would love to play full-back.”

His next big challenge is the Croke Park clash with Australia, an occasion in which he will come up against the Wallaby captain, Rocky Elsom, who was hugely influential in Leinster’s Heineken Cup triumph last season.

“Australia come from a winning mentality and while they are not the form team of the Tri-Nations, when you’re playing week in, week out, against South Africa and New Zealand, it’s pretty tough competition,” he points out. “Rocky and I were team mates but we were never particularly close off the park so I wouldn’t keep in touch with him. But he seems to be going very well and I’m delighted he got the captaincy. He works very hard and will be a good leader on the pitch. When guys are playing every week to a very high level, a lot is down to responsibility and getting yourself mentally prepared for a game. It is important that you have leaders in the changing room who can say important things and know the right time to say them. I think it was in the Heineken Cup final after Leicester had scored a try and he and Leo (Cullen) got the group together and had some really good things to say to us.”

Fitzgerald is disarmingly honest when admitting that the “Lions tour was disappointing from a personal perspective”. He made the team for the second Test but was dropped after being blamed by management for a Springbok try. In his recent autobiography, coach Ian McGeechan states: “We made one defensive error, when Luke Fitzgerald missed his assignment on JP Pietersen, and we gave them a try from nothing from a lineout. It was so soft.”

These appear harsh words by McGeechan but again Fitzgerald isn’t holding any grudges. Instead, he muses that “it was a great experience but a disappointing result on the day. I don’t want to make excuses. I was very disappointed to get dropped... I made one or two errors that probably cost me the position. It was cutthroat stuff out there. I suppose everyone came out of the third Test looking very well because I felt they didn’t put out that strong a team. It was a good finish from a squad perspective but not from a personal perspective.”

Given his excellent early season form, the experience has helped Fitzgerald to become a better player. He says he has used it as a “motivating factor. It could have gone two ways, I could have got down on myself and doubted myself but instead felt I should back myself more and trust my own instincts and now I feel very confident in myself.”