Hard knocks part of life for Tomás

WITH a season of injury-induced frustration such as he has had, it might come as a surprise that Tomás O’Leary should choose a sports documentary series by the name of Hard Knocks to pass the long hours of hotel life with Ireland.

Whether in camp on the Dublin outskirts or on the road, as he will be this weekend as the Six Nations campaign takes Ireland to Cardiff, there is plenty of time to kill between training sessions, gym work and team meetings.

Yet having been reduced to a stop-start season by a fractured thumb and a recurring back spasm that kept the 27-year-old Munster scrum-half out of Ireland’s narrow victory over Scotland at Murrayfield nine days ago, the HBO documentary series about pre-season training with an NFL team hardly seems like an escape from it all.

The name of the game, though, is “just to kill whatever few hours you have”, O’Leary says.

“All the boys will have their different DVD box sets and movies. I’d be watching Hard Knocks at the minute, a fly on the wall documentary on an American Football team, how they work and train. I’ve them loaded on my laptop, and I’m watching the (series) on the Cincinnati Bengals. I’m also into the latter stages of Entourage and enjoying that.”

It’s not Hollywood and there is no entourage, but O’Leary and his team-mates spend as much time on planes and in hotels as any A-list actor. This latest stretch has seen the Ireland squad brought together since the last week of January, with the fixture cycle this season taking them on three away trips to Rome, Edinburgh and now Cardiff.

“I’m used to it now but I’ve been back and forth to home with the injury this time. We’ve had time off and two- and three-day camps to give fellas a couple of days at home which have been good to break things up but we’re only in camp six or seven weeks every year and the rest of the time you’re back home so I try and enjoy the experience of immersing yourself in rugby.”

Not that O’Leary is a slave to his profession. Once camp is over, the Cork man said he would not be one to carry on immersing himself in the sport.

“No, I’d leave it alone. I wouldn’t be a massive man for watching the rugby, other than when it comes to analysing teams. When I’m away from rugby I like to chill out and switch off from it, watch some TV, meet my buddies for a coffee or whatever. I like to get away from it when I can but you can’t always.”

Certainly not this weekend, although there could be no better place for O’Leary to start the rest of the season than this Saturday at his home away from home, the Millennium Stadium. He can finally see daylight after his latest bump in the road, that troublesome back spasm that hampered his performances against Italy and France and forced him out of the Scotland game. Now, beginning with this Saturday evening’s latest Six Nations instalment against Wales, at a stadium in which he won a Heineken Cup in 2008 and the Grand Slam in 2009, O’Leary is looking forward to what he hopes is an extended run of games to enable him to regain the peak of his fitness and form.

“Obviously the timing wasn’t great but I’ve had worse injuries to deal with and hopefully I can get back and be competitive for the game this weekend. Hopefully it was just a short-term blip. It has (been frustrating) but hopefully that’s the end of it and I can get back to full fitness and have a good run at the end of the season and going into the World Cup.”

With two games left in the Six Nations championship and Munster fighting campaigns in both the Magners League and Amlin Challenge Cup, there is still plenty of rugby left in this season, let alone four World Cup warm-up games in August ahead of the tournament itself in New Zealand over September and October.

Perhaps, it is put to O’Leary, a lighter schedule this winter will be seen as a positive in the bigger picture.

“Well there’s no fear of being fla’d out now, anyway,” he replied. “I just want a run of games under my belt and to get as sharp as I can. I want to get that match sharpness up as good as I can, hopefully stay injury free and drive on.”

Having started both the Italy and France games for Ireland in February, O’Leary is vying for the starting number nine shirt on Saturday with Eoin Reddan, who stepped into the breach with try-scoring aplomb in Edinburgh and is favourite to hang on to the scrum-half berth this weekend.

It was a performance that left the recovering O’Leary in philosophical mood as to his chances of selection.

“Redser had a great game last week. Obviously there’s always competition there. When a player comes in and does well it’s not going to be easy to get back into the side. So I just have to try and train and try and get back into the squad and if I’m picked, brilliant, and if not, as a sub and I’ll be happy to do that.”

Despite all the gloom and doom circulating around Irish rugby in the wake of a disappointing 2010 and less than convincing Six Nations to date in 2011, O’Leary is convinced Ireland, having scored three tries in back-to-back games, are developing at a decent rate in their bid to embrace a more expansive style of rugby that Declan Kidney believes is required to catch the likes of New Zealand and Australia.

“In terms of our performance we know where we’re at and we know we’re going in the right direction so we’re certainly happy with the way things are going,” he said.

“We’ve two wins from three and we’d prefer it was three from three, so we’re not fully satisfied with our performance but we’re going in the right direction.

“Watching our games, we’re definitely creating a lot of opportunities and creating scoring chances and that’s the main thing. Now it’s a case of converting all of those chances into tries. We have been scoring a few tries but we’re definitely leaving a few out there. It would be a lot more worrying if we weren’t creating those opportunities.”

Winning the Grand Slam on Ireland’s last visit to Cardiff will stir great memories for Irish fans this weekend, although O’Leary has long since moved on. “It seems like an eternity ago and this time we have the potential for a Triple Crown if we get the win over Wales so it’s a massive fixture for us. Hopefully if we can win it leaves waiting for England and a Triple Crown decider.”