Cullen’s leading role

HE may be deemed a stand-in for skipper Brian O’Driscoll, but Leo Cullen will walk tall en route to the Murrayfield halfway line this afternoon as Ireland’s 100th captain.

It’s a warm-up match for the World Cup and the make-up of the team suggests a difficult day but defeat will hardly put a dent in the encouraging preparations for next month’s tournament in New Zealand.

However, even though there are only two survivors from the starting side that defeated England 24-8 in the final game of the Six Nations last April, a lot of players have a lot to gain or lose this weekend.

For Cullen though, this is a long time coming. Coach Declan Kidney described his elevation to captaincy as natural. There wouldn’t be too many disagree with that assessment, given Cullen beat O’Driscoll to the Leinster captaincy following his return a few years ago from Leicester.

He went on to lead them to two Heineken Cup triumphs and captained Ireland at U19, U21 and A levels.

He’ll have an experienced team to lead as well, all bar Mike McCarthy on the starting line-up and Felix Jones in the reserves being capped. While it isn’t the best 15 on show it’s full of players looking to book a place on the plane to the finals. Kidney has told the squad places are up for grabs. With games against Scotland, France (twice) and England before the announcement, he wants to use as many players as possible.

“Going to New Zealand it is important to have at least 30 match-fit players,” he said.

“We will do our best to do that so there will be some changes for the following week.”

But he insisted selection for New Zealand won’t be simply based on activities over these next four games. Certain players have already been pencilled in to his list.

“Some guys have gone well over the last couple of years, We will sum it up from how guys went towards the end of last season, from what we know guys can bring to it, how they have gone in pre season and the fourth part of that will be to see how they go in the coming matches.

“So it’s open enough in that there is an opportunity for everyone to play their way in if I can accommodate them with game time, but it may not be possible to do that in order to get 30 guys match fit.

“There is no fairness in it because we have five games including a friendly against Connacht. You try to divide up the 400 minutes evenly but that doesn’t happen because you have to try to give combinations a chance to work, you have to get some guys who were out more time than others to get them match-fit and the difficulty is to start in terms of telling guys where they stand, not just a last minute affair.”

Meanwhile, Chris Paterson, Scotland’s most capped player and record points scorer, is refusing to take his place in a fourth World Cup squad for granted despite starting against Ireland today for his 105th cap. Should the Edinburgh back be included in the final squad, he will become the first Scot to appear in four global tournaments.

“It’s a goal of mine, to reach the World Cup but I’ve always said these are things I’ll probably be more proud of when I stop playing.”