O’Brien: We did no wrong

SEÁN O’BRIEN has dismissed an allegation that the behaviour of Irish players at a Queenstown Bar in New Zealand during the Rugby World Cup was “much worse” than that of their English counterparts.

That claim was made by an unnamed member of Martin Johnson’s squad and revealed this week in the controversial ‘Twickileaks’ documents which were part of the confidential reviews of England’s performance at the tournament.

Among a litany of lowlights for the 2003 world champions was Mike Tindall’s infamous night out in Queenstown. The IRFU are known to be seething at the fact that they have been made a subplot to the controversy but O’Brien was less perturbed yesterday.

“We weren’t really dragged into it, to be honest,” he said at a function to promote sport ahead of next month’s budget. “As far as I read it, they mentioned us on being on a night out as well and some of the Irish media were with us.

“But I can assure you there was no dwarf-throwing on our part,” he said in reference to England’s well-publicised outing.

“There was none of that craic. We were having a good time together but no one got out of hand, no one did anything wrong.”

A picture of a shirtless Stephen Ferris was printed on the front page of an Irish tabloid on the morning of the Ireland-Australia game but this was not viewed as evidence of a player breaching any discipline guidelines.

Ireland’s camp was clearly a happy one during the tournament. Players were pictured enjoying a range of leisure activities on their arrival at the Queenstown holiday resort as every effort was made to avoid the mistakes of the spiritless 2007 experience.

That social diary would have come in for far more scrutiny had Ireland struggled in the pool stages but O’Brien stressed the need for players to let their hair down as well.

“It’s just a little bit of a release, you know? You’re professional players and you’re caught up in a world where you have to be on your game every day of the week, whether it’s training or matches. You’re trying to push yourself to be the best so every now and then — whether it’s every five, six or seven weeks — you let your hair down. You get out. Obviously, you don’t do anything stupid.

“It’s more about relaxing and getting out of that little bubble you might be in or of getting your mind away from rugby. Players enjoy that as well and enjoy going out with each other.”

Doing that incognito has become much more difficult in these technological times. O’Brien himself was videoed last summer on a boat in Ibiza with Ipswich Town midfielder Jimmy Bullard perched on his shoulders.

Unlike England’s Manu Tuilagi, who was warned and fined by New Zealand police for leaping off a ferry and into Auckland Harbour, O’Brien was not on team duty at the time and he didn’t end up in the water either. “Again, it was a bit of laugh. There was no harm done. It would be a different story if I fired him off the boat. Jumping around with him on the boat, there’s no harm in that in my eyes. You have to know when you go out, you’re not going out to do damage or misbehave.”

Behaviour and results weren’t the only differences between the Irish and English experiences. It is clear now that the culture of the RFU’s senior national squad needs to be stripped bare and built again from scratch.

The IRFU will be conducting its own World Cup review as a matter of course. O’Brien is not aware yet whether he will be asked for his input but the finished document will be a humdrum audit as opposed to England’s page-turner.

“The way everything was done with Ireland this year was spot on,” said the Tullow forward.

In this instance, no news is definitely good news.