Heaslip not fazed by BOD

Under fire Ireland captain Jamie Heaslip has insisted he does not feel inhibited by the presence of predecessor Brian O’Driscoll in his team but welcomes his Leinster team-mate’s leadership role in the side.

Heaslip, who will lead his country for just the sixth time when Ireland play France in the RBS 6 Nations this Saturday (5:30pm), has had his leadership qualities questioned in some quarters after two successive narrow defeats that could have easily gone the other way.

Asked if he was inhibited by O’Driscoll, Heaslip said: “Not at all, no. Before now, I’ve been captain of Leinster while Brian was on the pitch and he’s the exact same now as he was then with me being in the captain’s role. He’s a player of unbelievable experience and there’s a lot of players on the field with great experience and they’re always constantly feeding in. That’s great to have, you can’t see everything on the pitch so it’s great to have the information come from other guys as well.”

As for the team’s recent performances, Heaslip added: “The thing we’re annoyed about is that we’re creating the opportunities but we’re not finishing.

“I mean both games are games where there was one score between winning and losing and that’s the frustrating thing, where the last game we might have had two or three really good try-scoring opportunities and didn’t take them, which probably would have changed the game a good bit. And the England game, just letting them kick some easy points which is frustrating.

“These are games where we don’t think we’ve been beaten, that we’ve lost, and from a player’s point of view that’s the frustrating thing and that’s why we want to get out there again this weekend and get going again.”

Equally under pressure is head coach Declan Kidney, whose contract expires this summer, but Heaslip said that issue was not interfering the players’ thoughts this week.

“Quite like Declan, we’re just focused on this week and everything else is outside of our control, outside our remit. We’re just all about France and getting ourselves right for that game. It’s a massive challenge for us, even though they haven’t won a game yet, we all know what those players are capable of, so we’ve a big enough task in hand.”