D’Arcy prepares for Ireland life without ‘irreplaceable’ Brian

GORDON D’ARCY admitted yesterday that Brian O’Driscoll will be “irreplaceable” come the Six Nations but challenged suitors to the number 13 jersey to grasp the opportunity to replace the injured talisman with both hands.

Few know better how difficult that will be. The pair have spent almost their entire careers playing beside one another at provincial and international level and, indeed, their 47 starts together for Ireland represents a world record for a Test centre partnership.

O’Driscoll will do well to feature in Ireland’s summer tour to New Zealand after undergoing shoulder surgery on a trapped nerve in November so it will be unchartered territory in the Six Nations for both player and team.

The former Lions captain has never appeared in less than four of the five games since making his tournament debut against England in February 2000, when the competition expanded to cater for Italy for the first time.

Leinster have coped admirably in his absence and are on course for a potential league and cup double but the uncertainty surrounding who will claim his jersey for the national side will dominate the build-up to Sunday week’s opener against Wales in Dublin.

“I don’t know how to describe Brian,” said D’Arcy. “You can fill in the adjectives yourself. Irish rugby has been built on his shoulders for a long time and he has been the foundation of the team for Leinster and Ireland. It’s a case of how do you replace the irreplaceable?

“Then Fergus (McFadden) and Eoin O’Malley start playing for Leinster and Keith Earls gets a few games for Munster and you just have to fill the void and get on with it. If you are worried about it, then it becomes a bigger problem that it is. You just look at the form of the guys in the 13 jerseys for the provinces and you put faith in them. You put someone in that 13 jersey and they understand the magnitude of what they are taking and they either grasp it with both hands and fill it or they don’t.”

Add Tommy Bowe, Paddy Wallace and Luke Fitzgerald to the names listed above and the potential for guessing games is endless ahead of Declan Kidney’s first selection in 2012 but the dynamic will differ regardless of who gets the nod. O’Driscoll’s combination of leadership, experience, attacking threat and defensive bullishness will be impossible to replicate but D’Arcy has worked closely with motivational expert Enda McNulty and knows it is important to focus on potential gains rather than losses.

“Unless Blackrock have kept some sort of genetic thing, then you are never going to replace like with like,” said the Clongowes man who travelled from Dublin to Limerick yesterday to meet up with Kidney’s initial squad.

“All those guys are candidates and have different attributes that, say, Brian doesn’t have. So you work with whoever is there and you play to his strengths. The 10s we have ... Jonny (Sexton) is very good at getting the best out of players around him.”

Ronan O’Gara’s ears may perk up at D’Arcy’s mention of his Leinster colleague in that context but it will be interesting to see who starts the first game and what the thoughts are of Les Kiss as the tournament looms.

The Australian has until now been in charge of the defence portfolio but he has been handed extra duties on the attack side, along with kicking coach Mark Tainton, now that Alan Gaffney has departed the Ireland setup.

D’Arcy said: “I have great chats with Kissy, he is a very interesting guy. He has a great outlook on life and is probably one of the most positive people I have ever met. He will bring that enthusiasm into the backs role.

“I did a little bit of YouTube on him and he wasn’t a bad little player!

“I’m really looking forward to seeing what he can do, he has some really good ideas. As a player and having quite a number of coaches in the last few years, if the coach has the respect of the players it can go a long way and one thing Les definitely has is the respect of the players.”

With Wales first up in less than a fortnight, Kiss and Tainton will have to hit the ground running in their new brief as Ireland prepare to face the side that brought their World Cup ambitions to an end last October.

Revenge is in the air but D’Arcy will not inhale too deeply.

“I personally have put the World Cup to bed ... The (RWC) loss will be a good element for us — we definitely do owe them one — but it can’t be the be all and end all. If we are overly focused on getting revenge, well, revenge never works, no matter what you are doing it in.”