Ireland won’t be bullied again
The arduous journey to New Zealand is out of the system and the Ireland squad are buzzing about the 2011 World Cup campaign which for them starts on Sunday with their Pool C opening encounter against O’Sullivan’s Eagles.
And after a chastening August in which defeats were recorded in four warm-up Tests for Declan Kidney’s side, O’Callaghan says the lessons have been learned, and not just from last month but the last World Cup, when, under O’Sullivan, Ireland blew their chances in the group stages by trying to play champagne rugby instead of winning stuff.
“I think we learned that over the four games,” O’Callaghan said.
“Maybe it wasn’t something we knew in the last ... like I suppose against Georgia and Namibia (in 2007)..., I know we played like a bag of s**t but maybe we tried to play too much ball.
“You just have to win and that’s all it’s about. At least now we’re thinking like that rather than thinking we have to go out here and play all our shape, all our patterns and things like that and to be honest, there’s no better team to be tested against than America because if any coach can exploit a weakness in us it will be Eddie.
“I suppose the review after that match will show where we’re at ... it’s almost doing an analysis of yourself. He will have every area that we’re poor at and he’ll highlight them and it’s a great challenge to us to know that that’s coming up.”
With four of the last six Heineken Cup finals won by either Munster or Leinster, it is clear the players from both provinces as well as Kidney know all there is to know about cup rugby and O’Callaghan detected a distinct change in gear from the management once the squad arrived in New Zealand.
“Even on Friday morning he was geared around getting results,” the Munster lock said of Kidney.
“People might say that’s boring enough but it’s the little things that might lead to three points. Good drills as well, new ideas, and it’s good that we’ve got here now and they’ve opened the bag a bit more. There’s new plans, there’s new lineouts, new moves.
“I didn’t know at the time but we were a little bit restricted in the warm-up games because they didn’t want to show their hand. So that’s what this week’s about, getting up to speed for ourselves and then next week it’s all about concentrating on America, which will be massive.
“I would take fierce comfort in the fact that they’ve everything covered. Like even the small thing that (strength and conditioning coach) Phil Morrow’s sessions have been good and everything’s been kept an eye on; knowing it’s been really well planned.
“I’m a bit of a nerd for stuff like that, I love it. You can see that they’ve thought everything out and I take strength from that, that they’re thinking down the track and thinking a little further ahead than us. We tend to be blinkered a bit, look at the 80 minutes but at least they’re on it.”
O’Callaghan admitted there was a distinct lack of winning rugby about Ireland during August, particularly in the final warm-up against England.
“It’s hugely disappointing when you look at the results and your confidence and stuff like that but I suppose we did play a bit of shape and stuff like that at times when we didn’t play cup final rugby.
“The English match we just got the s**t kicked out of us, to be honest. They just ran over the top of us. We played a friendly, they played a Test match international and we got caught on the hop there a bit, which is gutting because of all the teams to get caught out by like that, it was England, which is a gutter.
“The warm-up games would be disappointing but if they’re of some use in terms of getting us ready and the biggest thing the English game taught us was cup-final rugby, wasn’t it, and Deccie was saying to us this morning, it was cup-final stuff and we were going through things that win games; things you probably talk about in semi- finals, Heineken Cup and Magners, just making sure of the fine detail.
“Even the team meeting before we left, I felt it was good and honest and frank and left us in no doubt. He pointed out bits in the game he was disappointed with, where we got bullied and, to be fair, when he brought up stuff like that you’re nearly embarrassed.”
Much to take on board then as D-day approaches in the shape of that first game but O’Callaghan believes Ireland will be able to stand up to the big teams and not get bullied again.
“I think we can. We play against bigger nations the whole time but we’ve got good resolve. Just being an Irish team we’ve got fighting spirit and that was what was disappointing about that England match.
“Obviously they were hurting from the last time they came over but if we’d have rammed it down their throat two times in-a-row you’d wonder how they’d be thinking coming over from then on in. It would have been a big momentum change for us, so it was disappointing in that regard.
“But you’ve got to try and park it a bit and learn the lessons from it and that will definitely be the case when it comes to all the rugby stuff. But we’d be fools if we didn’t take something out of those games, rugby-wise.”
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