O’Brien adapts and survives
A colossus in defence and a wrecking ball in attack for Ireland in their famous World Cup win over the Wallabies at Eden Park, O’Brien was not even playing in his favourite position, preferring the ball-carrying blindside flanker’s role or number eight to the shovelling and scavenging work required of a seven.
Yet he managed to produce a multi-faceted display that highlighted all that was good in any back-row position, perfectly in tandem with Stephen Ferris at six and Jamie Heaslip at eight.
“I think you have to be able to adapt to being in different positions on the field,” O’Brien said.
“You can’t just say, ‘oh, this is my job’, you have to adapt to certain things that might arise during the game and all the back-rowers nowadays are able to do that, regardless of where they play.
“With regards to the South Africans, [Heinrich] Brussouw plays with six on his back, Schalk Burger at seven and you see them swapping around every now and again so it doesn’t really make a difference. Obviously, your first-phase ball is important and you do whatever you have to do to latch onto that but, after that, it’s heads up and play what you see and read the game.
“You learn as you go along. It’s a thing you pick up and a thing you have to have within your own game. I don’t think it’s a thing the coaches say, it’s just the way they want you to do it and we are all smart enough and playing long enough to learn ourselves.”
As a result, O’Brien did more than his fair share of ball-carrying alongside his back-row partners.
“If the opportunity comes it’s up to me to work hard on the field and if the opportunity comes to carry, carry. And that’s what happened, the game was slowing and we were handling well so I was happy enough.
“I suppose we are used to playing with each other in training, we’ve been together over the last couple of weeks and you know where your opportunities might arise on the field and it just happened at the weekend, I was happy enough with the contribution and carrying and all the other stuff.”
The whole experience in O’Brien’s first game in a month since damaging medial knee ligaments against France in August left the Leinster star “feeling very sore afterwards”.
“Training has been good today and yesterday though, the stiffness is gone and I’m looking forward to getting another game now.”
That could well come against Russia this Sunday in Rotorua, with head coach Declan Kidney looking to make some changes from the side that started against the Wallabies but keen to give those players who missed parts of pre-season valuable game time ahead of the final Pool C game with Italy on October 2.
If O’Brien does play he will be reunited with an old teammate from his Leinster Academy days, Russian wing Vasily Artemiev, who attended Blackrock College and scored two tries for Ireland Schools against England in 2005.
Artemiev will join Heineken Cup finalists Northampton Saints after the World Cup and O’Brien has singled his former teammate out as a big threat in the Russian side.
“Vaz is a strong boy, incredibly quick and probably, if he stuck around [Leinster] for another while, he would have broken through. Maybe but he wanted to go back to Russia. He’s a threat and we’ll have to keep a close eye on him. He takes good surprise lines down the short side every now again and he’s a danger.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
