We are less predictable than before, says Drico

IRELAND captain Brian O’Driscoll believes the lessons of his last quarter-final appearance have been learned and, eight years on, will not be repeated.

The last time the Irish reached the last eight was at the 2003 World Cup in Australia, when Eddie O’Sullivan’s side finished second behind the hosts in pool play to advance, only to lose 43-21 to France in Melbourne.

Saturday, Wales await with a first semi-final appearance stillbeckoning for O’Driscoll and the skipper believes their knowledge of their opponents would be asvaluable as the experience of losing World Cup knockout games. “We probably got our game-plan wrong that day and we got blown away early on and the game waseffectively over after 25 or 30minutes,” O’Driscoll said. “We would aim to be in the game a bit longer this time around.

“It’s not a case of learning from those experiences. We have played Wales enough times to understand them and the type of game they like to play. We have to try andcounteract that and impose ourselves.”

This Ireland team is a differentanimal from the outfit that won the Grand Slam in 2009, let alone the 2003 model.

O’Driscoll continued: “We have changed. If you remain the same and don’t try and improve on what you’ve built you remain stagnant. I would like to think we have become, for want of another word, a little less predictable. We have a bit more to our game, morevariety. Declan worked on aspects of our game to improve it, our phase play and perhaps we are not focusing so much on first phase as we did in the past with the realisation that nowadays it is a multi-phased game that’s needed to break down defences. We have tried to buy into that and have evolved over the last couple of years.”

So, too, have Wales, Kidney argued, making Warren Gatland’s side a more difficult prospect.

“Wales’s game, no different to ours, has probably evolved over the last couple of years and they are a much harder team to tie down than maybe they were 18 months ago. But that’s what coaches do, that’s what good teams do. They evolve over a period of time and change a few things around, expand their game and expand their options.

“They are obviously in a sweet enough place – five wins out of seven matches, they are going pretty well.”