Captain hails half-back combination of O’Gara and O’Leary
O’Driscoll was again the Irish hero with a last minute try, his 37th for his country, and after claiming it was the result of “some smart play” proceeded to underline the importance of O’Leary’s role.
“It was great vision by Tomás to pick out the right pass,” he stressed. “He had a lot of options but he picked the right one, not only for that one but for Tommy’s (Bowe) try as well. He could have picked a number of different people but they were two great pieces of vision from him and that was the difference.”
O’Driscoll also heaped praise on O’Leary’s Munster colleague adding that the criticism directed towards O’Gara in recent weeks was ‘a little rough’.
“I thought Rog was really good today,” said O’Driscoll. “He controlled things very well, passed very well bar maybe the first one. But maybe I was too deep and so we’ll take 50-50 blame for that one.
“But he kicked immaculately both off the ground and out of hand and read things well. I thought it was a big performance, not that any of his team-mates who have played with him a lot of times felt he needed it.
“When you’re involved with a team that’s top of their group in their Heineken Cup group and 3rd or 4th in the Magners League, and people are giving out about their number 10, I think it’s a little rough.”
Not everything, of course, went according to plan where the O’Gara-O’Driscoll axis was concerned as between them they managed to gift Australia a seven pointer within minutes of the start. Drew Mitchell gathered a loose ball after O’Driscoll couldn’t hold his out-half’s pass and sprinted home from 30 metres for a try converted by Matt Giteau.
“Rog probably threw the ball a little too far out in front of me and I couldn’t quite get it,” O’Driscoll explained.
“It was a sloppy try to give up so early on.”
O’Driscoll’s satisfaction at scoring a game saving try was demonstrated when he threw the ball high in the air after touching down. He explained: “I was pleased that we were rewarded in sticking with them to the death and grinding out a draw. We tried a lot of things and plenty didn’t work but if you don’t try, you don’t get better as a team.
“After that performance, we’ll be a lot better next week not having played together for six months.”
Coach Declan Kidney readily acknowledged that this was far from a perfect Irish performance and this week’s camp, will include some dvd sessions in the build-up to the games against Fiji and South Africa.
However he saw several positives and foremost among them had to be how well his front-row, which included new boy Cian Healy, stood up to the mighty test provided by the Australian trio of Benn Robinson, Stephen Moore and Ben Alexander.
“For Cian to play his first international, for John (Hayes) to play his first game in six weeks and for Jerry (Flannery) with such limited game time and to do it as well as they did was tremendous,” Kidney glowed. “The plaudits will rightly go to Brian for getting another one of his one metre tries, but it was a great, solid scrum when some had gone against us earlier.
“There was a good feed from the eight to the nine and after that a good pass and it was a good try.”
Kidney, as always, kept the lid on things when praising his teams and all he would say of a fine Irish line-out performance was “that it went well, we robbed one or two of theirs and they robbed one or two of ours. It was pretty standard Ireland-Australia stuff.
“I’m delighted we tried things, you don’t find out about yourself if you don’t. It’s a case of mixing that in with what we did last year. We said at the end of last year that we were a good side, not a great side, and I’d still hold with that.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
