O’Connell focused on eliminating mistakes

Paul O’Connell is convinced Munster can rectify the mistakes which led to last week’s 51-24 defeat by Glasgow Warriors and keep their dreams of Heineken Cup glory alive.

There has been plenty of soul-searching in Rob Penney’s squad after their nightmare visit to Scotland but the iconic second row wants the side to accentuate the positives ahead of a daunting quarter-final against Conor O’Shea’s impressive Harlequins.

“You can’t miss tackles and hand teams three tries with intercepts like we did. We played a good first half of rugby. We did a lot of the things we wanted to do and did them well. But we didn’t follow that up in the second half. The mistakes can be rectified and very easily too, that’s what we were aiming to do this week. These are frustrating things to happen but as a team you just have to move on, and we will. The way we played in the first half showed us a bit about ourselves; it was a great mixture of mauling, tight play, wide play and that’s what we want to do.”

Harlequins have suffered a drop in form as they battle for Aviva Premiership honours with home defeats by Wasps and Exeter Chiefs. But such statistics are cold comfort to O’Connell.

“It’s going to be an incredibly tough game, they’re full of confidence; they have lots of English internationals and Nick Evans playing ten who would, if Dan Carter wasn’t there, probably have been the New Zealand out half for the last number of years. They’re Premiership champions, they went through the group stages relatively unscathed, so they are an excellent side playing great rugby and they’re full of confidence. They’re probably very happy they got us at home of all the seven teams they might have been drawn against.”

Clearly, though, O’Connell believes there is hope: “I think it’s important we do what is required of us at every moment, if it’s required of us to play it tight then we need to take them on there, it is important that we find the space, to kick it or run it or force our way there in whatever way we need to; it is a big game, it’s a quarter final and it is going to be very tight. The bigger games become the tighter players become and the less rugby is played at times; if that happens then hopefully we will be able to play it both ways – we know we’re capable of it.”