A revealing few weeks ahead

AFTER weeks of painstaking work in the gym and — if the lessons of four years ago have been absorbed — plenty of ball work and contact drills on the manicured playing surfaces of Carton House, the Irish squad will get a first indication of where their preparations lay when they face Scotland in Murrayfield this Saturday.

It is an anxious time for all involved. Operating in isolation for weeks while observing their counterparts in the southern hemisphere going for broke in the Tri Nations, it is inevitable that a sense of creeping uncertainty pervades the camp for all manner of reasons. Many of the players in contention for World Cup places have played little or no rugby for some time now and if RWC 2007 in France taught the Irish players anything, it’s that there’s a world of difference between being physically fit and match fit.

That challenge will resonate with many of the current squad who recognised at this stage four years ago against Saturday’s opposition in the same stadium that their bid for World Cup glory had already been compromised by a lack of rugby-related training over the summer months.

Commenting two years after the event in Eddie O’Sullivan’s autobiography Never Die Wondering, Irish captain Brian O’Driscoll recalls: “I remember playing against Scotland in the warm up and they just seemed sharper from a rugby point of view. They had started training with the ball three weeks earlier than us. So we just got that very wrong.”

It is very unlikely that Declan Kidney will have made the same mistake this time around as the Genesis report, commissioned after the calamitous events of the last World Cup, must have been compulsory bed-time reading for him over the course of the last 12 months. To err once is human, twice..... no way. Saturday will be interesting from that perspective alone, even if it would be wrong to expect too much at this early juncture.

I have long believed that staging the World Cup in September and October hands the initiative to the southern hemisphere giants. They will argue their players are reaching an exhaustive stage after a season of Super 15 and Tri Nations rugby and while there is a danger of losing players to injury during those competitions, the fact that they are far more battle-hardened than their counterparts from the northern hemisphere is a massive advantage. In addition, once you know your competitive programme in advance, you can manage the workload on the players. It also helps when you are in a position to alter the competition model to suit all concerned.

That is exactly what has happened with this year’s Tri Nations with the number of rounds reduced from three to two, thus offering four highly competitive games for each country as opposed to last season’s six-game programme. The pace and physicality of those games is far greater than what our northern hemisphere teams will experience over the course of their warm up internationals, even if South Africa are indulging in a bit of silly buggers at the moment. It will be interesting to see if they can turn things around on the home leg of their Tri Nations series or if too much damage has been inflicted already.

The fact the Queensland Reds became the first Australian side to win the Super Rugby tournament since 2004 will give a boost to a squad who have blooded a lot of talented young players under Robbie Deans without reaping much reward in terms of success in the Tri Nations. That win, just like Leinster’s outstanding victory in the Heineken Cup, is sure to galvanise a very talented Wallaby squad who often appear lacking in real self belief in tight contests. From that point of view this Saturday’s encounter with New Zealand in Auckland will be very revealing and will be watched with particular interest by the Irish management. An Aussie side brimming with confidence is a dangerous foe. The next three contests of their Tri Nations will dictate just what kind of animal Ireland will face when Australia return to Auckland on September 17.

With both Ireland and England’s World Cup squads to be announced on the Monday before the countries meet in the Aviva Stadium on August 27, it is unlikely the players will bring the same level of intensity as they would to a Six Nations encounter, coming as it does just a few days before they depart for down under.

Cast your mind back to 2005 with Clive Woodward’s Lions played a warm-up game against a very under strength Argentine side in Cardiff two days before they left for New Zealand and were lucky to escape with a draw at the death. None of the players really wanted to play in that game. One’s first instinct before any big tournament or tour is to make sure you are on board when the flight takes off.

However, with at least five places in the squad still up for grabs and a number of players including Stephen Ferris, Andrew Trimble, Jerry Flannery, Geordan Murphy, Tomás O’Leary, Paddy Wallace, Rob Kearney and Tony Buckley out to show they have recovered from their various ailments, the opening contests against Scotland, Connacht and France (home and away) will be both instructive and competitive. It will be very interesting to see just how Kidney decides to mix and match his selections given that Ireland’s key game in the World Cup comes around very quickly when they meet the Aussies in game two.

Given his injury and suspension travails over the last 15 months Paul O’Connell could do with playing in a least three of those games while others — specifically Flannery, Kearney and Ferris — could also do with badly needed game time. Don’t be surprised on that basis to see a handful of World Cup contenders contesting with their provinces in pre-season games before the final squad is announced.

Therefore, Saturday’s game assumes an importance that one does not normally associate with fixtures played this early in the season. As a minimum, a victory would set the tone for the immediate challenges ahead while a performance would prove a welcome bonus. Next week the players prepare for another reminder of their 2007 agony when they return to the scene of their nightmare outings against Namibia and Georgia at the Stade Chaban-Delmas in Bordeaux to face a French team riddled with self doubt after losing to Italy in their last outing.

It promises to be a very revealing few weeks.