Heaslip hails forward-thinking tweaks by Smal

JAMIE HEASLIP yesterday hailed forwards coach Gert Smal for his ability to spot slight weaknesses in Ireland’s opponents, an ability that helped Paul O’Connell and Donncha O’Callaghan wreak first-half havoc on Wales’ lineout play at Croke Park on Saturday.

While everyone pointed to one crucially destructive Irish scrum as the defining moment, the number eight highlighted the fact that Ireland managed to pilfer five of the Welsh throws, four of them crucially in the one-sided first half.

“The lineout has become one of our real strengths, particularly defensive lineouts. We’ve always been comfortable on our own ball but have managed to make opponents uncomfortableon theirs. It hasn’t come about byaccident, we’ve been doing a lot of work and Gert is particularly good in working out ways to compete (and be a nuisance). Paul (O’Connell) and Donncha (O’Callaghan), Leo (Cullen) too, have put a lot of work in on that with Gert and it paid off,” he said.

That one second-half scrum from which Ireland turned over possession and used that turnover to create athird try was, of course, particularly satisfying and Heaslip was delighted to find the ball at his feet rather thanhaving to scurry back and defend his line.

He described the moment: “Yeah, that was sweet; they were probablygetting the edge on us after the first couple of scrums but once we got our timing right we were able to drive them off the ball and it ended up at my feet so I was happy with that.

“It shows the experience on John Hayes’ side there and the fact that he had support from behind as well.“That was sweet, brilliant; they had got a penalty and went for a scrum, they reckoned they could smell a try; but to turn around and rock themback on their heels was very special.It was like saying it’s not going tohappen today for you lads; nice, very nice.

“Equally pleasing was the fact we proved we can be a force offensively off lineouts; we’re proud of the fact we produced very good quality possession off that subsequent lineout and scored directly from it for it proves we’redoing the work for go-forward stuff as well as defensive play,” he said.