‘It’s only going to take one small thing to ignite our form’

ONE killer pass. A surging break upfield. Maybe a thunderous tackle and turnover. That is all it could take for Ireland to come alive and shake off the current blues, with Rob Kearney ready and waiting for the great leap forwards.

There is nothing the full-back nor his team-mates can put their fingers on as game time against New Zealand approaches on Saturday at the Aviva Stadium but there is an intangible sense around the Ireland squad this week that their rugby is about to come good.

That may be in direct contradiction to the consensus of opinion outside of Declan Kidney’s Irish camp following the performances of the past two weekends when Ireland misfired against South Africa and struggled to overcome Samoa.

Yet with the 20-10 victory over the Samoans last Saturday bringing to an end a six-game losing streak, four of them Test matches, Ireland are back to winning ways and having the All Blacks in town may just be a blessing rather than the curse many expect it to be.

“Maybe this is the perfect chance for us, when we’ve been written off a bit,” Kearney said. “It’s only going to take one small thing to ignite our form back to where it should be and if that comes in the first five minutes, brilliant.

“It can come from such simple things, like forwards making a dominant tackle and just counter-rucking back over the ball and getting a turnover. It doesn’t have to be a big thing and sometimes at the time you don’t actually recognise that that’s the turning point but when you look back, it actually is.

“We’re training well, we’re still confident in training and hopefully things can just click for us.”

As to the schism between self-belief and current public opinion, forwards coach Gert Smal spoke about his surprise at the negativity following the first two autumn matches but Kearney, who missed the Samoa game due to bruising around his knee suffered against the Springboks, is realistic.

“The players don’t really talk a huge amount about it but I suppose that’s what happens when you don’t fulfil your potential. You get criticised and at times when you do fulfil it you get built up a little too much. So it’s about taking the good with the bad.’’

Cian Healy feels it too, the sense that Ireland are a click away from returning to form, despite the team’s bad day of scrummaging against Samoa which followed an awful afternoon of lineout play against South Africa.

“We’re just on a curve where it’s going to turn into a pretty strong scrum,” Healy said after working with scrum consultant Greg Feek for the past three weeks. “All the platform is laid and everyone is starting to buy into the way we’re trying to look at going forward.

“It’s just about that final click happening, the balance and set-up coming together which will result in a pretty strong scrum.”

Whether that is good enough to compete with an All Blacks pack Smal this week called the best scrummaging unit in the world, remains to be seen but Kearney has been a big admirer of the whole New Zealand side in their victories over England and Scotland so far on their tour.

“Pretty impressive all right,” he said. “They were awesome, just keeping it really simple, which is something which we could probably learn a little bit from.

“They just seem to impose their game-plan really well on the opposition. They’re getting quick ball, they’re building phases; all the things that we want to do and that we probably haven’t done enough of over the last few weeks.”