D’Arcy: Rog will be targeted
Wales coach Warren Gatland has often sent teams out to try and exploit fly-half O’Gara’s perceived defensive weaknesses, not least when Ireland went to Cardiff two years ago in search of the Slam.
O’Gara had the last laugh that day, sending over the drop goal at the Millennium Stadium that delivered an Irish clean sweep for the first time since 1948, and D’Arcy said yesterday that having seen off the Welsh then, they could do it again.
“This back-line has played against more or less this Welsh back-linebefore and we’ve come out on top. I don’t think it’s as if we have to go and reinvent the wheel here,” the Ireland inside centre said.
“Ronan and I have got a very good defensive relationship, we work well, we had a few chats yesterday and had a really, really good session.
“We know what’s coming, and it’s just up to us to meet it.
“It’s a point we have to look at; we have to look at (George) North, we have to look at Jamie Roberts, (Toby) Faletau when he is in midfield are their main ball-carriers.
“I’m very confident we will deal with them again.”
D’Arcy has done a lot of homework on midfield opponent and Lions team-mate Jamie Roberts, in particular and said the Welsh No.12 was rediscovering the form that made him one of the stars of the 2009 Lions tour to South Africa. “He’s probably one of the standout centres in the World Cup. He’s back to his best and probably had an unlucky run with injuries. So he’s carrying the ball well, he’s getting offloads, he’s getting his passes away in the wide channels as well.
“There was a lovely one to North against Fiji where Fiji looked like they had closed off the last man and it was lovely hands away to North and they scored a try up the other end. So he’s playing well but I’ve played against him, I’ve trained with him for the Lions — I know what he’s about so I’ll just have to up my game another little bit and bring whatever I can offer to the table.”
D’Arcy, though, is coming off his best performance in an Ireland jersey for some time, having emerged from an injury-hit pre-season and thrived in the direct game plan Ireland devised for Italy in the final Pool C game last Sunday.
“I was pretty happy with it,” he said. “I was saying a couple of weeks ago that I just needed to get a few games under my belt. I missed the pre-season but I’m getting better with every game. I knew it would just be a matter of time.
“The first two matches were as much about getting game time under the belt: I knew once I got game time that the pressure situations of getting the passes and getting the carries and getting your timing right (would come together).
“It’s a stepping stone. You build on every game and unfortunately it’s a cliché for me but I knew that because I was limited with my time on the field coming into the World Cup, I was going to have to make the time on the field count and improve much quicker.”
The Leinster centre certainly received a confidence boost from his own and the team’s performance and saw the win over Italy as a watershed moment.
“The sign of a good team is when the pressure’s on, being able to deliver, and we did deliver. I don’t think this Irish team in a World Cup has had a more pressure match: win the match and top the group and go through; lose the match and go home. It was as cut and dried as it could have been.
But once you walk off that field it’s a strange feeling, because you know you’ve done one of those ‘go to the box — tick it.’ You’ve done it but it’s almost like you don’t want to get carried away with that feeling because it in itself can be false. You go ‘yeah brilliant, we’ve achieved so much here’.
“Then you’re taking your eye off the ball for the next match.
“You look at, say, Leinster years ago winning a tight quarter-final match and doing a lap of honour and everybody would be going ‘Yay!’
“And then we’d go out and get pumped in the semi-final. It’s kind of like that. There’s enough experience — the Munster guys have been there, the Ulster guys are starting to get there, the lads playing in England — there’s enough experience in the team now to realise that while we’ve achieved something fantastic, it’s not where we want to finish.”
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