O’Gara and Murray get nod

MUNSTER half-backs Ronan O’Gara and Conor Murray have been charged with steering Ireland into the World Cup quarter-finals, but Declan Kidney was waiting on the fitness of Paul O’Connell and Tommy Bowe before finalising his team to start against Italy on Sunday.

Ireland face their Six Nations rivals at the Otago Stadium with the winner advancing to the last eight.

O’Connell and Bowe have been suffering from hamstring and calf strains respectively since the 15-6 win over Australia two Saturdays ago and sat out last Sunday’s 62-12 thumping of Russia in Rotorua. While both were favourites to be passed fit, Kidney thought it prudent to wait as long as possible before confirming their participation.

So Leo Cullen is on standby to replace O’Connell and Andrew Trimble is in a similar position regarding Bowe on the right wing, with subsequent ramifications for the make-up of the replacements’ bench with Cullen, Donnacha Ryan and Denis Leamy vying for two forwards places and Trimble, Bowe and Geordan Murphy in contention for the outside backs’ spot.

There is a further complication at replacement prop with Kidney pondering a decision over whether Tom Court or Tony Buckley occupies that berth on the bench.

“Tommy (Bowe) was running great speeds on Wednesday but we didn’t have a training yesterday and I expect them to be training fully on Friday too,” Kidney said of the two fitness doubts.

What is certain, however, is that Murray and O’Gara, who started last time out against the Russians alongside Isaac Boss, have been preferred to their Leinster rivals Eoin Reddan and Jonny Sexton at scrum-half and fly-half respectively with the Munster pair’s closing out of the Australia game a key pointer to Kidney’s thinking.

“The way the five half-backs have been going, three scrum-halves have done well, the two out-halves have done well for this one. Ronan and Conor went well in the last 20 minutes against Australia and I thought Ronan went well the last day. I think Jonny’s going well, I just think it’s a good combination for us this time going into it.”

Kidney said the choice of the more physically Murray at scrum-half was not made specifically with the robust Italian back row led by Sergio Parisse in mind and denied O’Gara’s superior goal-kicking statistics in the tournament so far had got him the nod over Sexton.

“(O’Gara) has been place-kicking well and I know the thing about Jonny’s (place-kicking) but we’ve all seen that in players as well and I’ve no doubts that if Jonny had to start that wouldn’t worry me then either.

“I’d hate to go down the road that we’re picking Ronan because of place-kicking. He’s too good a player to be saying that about him and Jonny’s place-kicking isn’t a concern for me so I wouldn’t be knocking that part either. I just think this is a good combination going into this one.”

As you might expect from a two-time Heineken Cup-winning coach, former Munster boss Kidney said he was relishing the cup-final feel of this weekend’s game.

“It’s great isn’t it? This is where we want to get to. Everybody thought from a long time back that Australia, all the talk was about them. In our own minds we always knew it was going to be Italy.

“Australia was the attractive one to win, Italy was the necessary one to win.”

Having beaten Australia, though, it would be a devastating blow for Irish rugby if Kidney’s team were to throw it all away against the Italians but the Ireland coach preferred to take the glass half-full approach.

“What you do is use that (win) to give you a bit of momentum and it’s been good for us in that sense. But that momentum then was definitely carried on by the lads who played last week and where I’m delighted with that is we’ve guys coming into this game who over the last two weeks have had tournament life but not a lot of game time. They’re fresh and looking forward to it and you need that keenness coming into it.”