Gordon D’Arcy still hoping to bow out in style
The Leinster centre signed a short-term extension with the IRFU last season, which will take him up to the end of the tournament in late October, and he will be one of the 45 names included in the preliminary tournament squad to be released today.
The lucky men will congregate in Carton House on Sunday evening for the start of the build-up and D’Arcy – like every other player in contention – has spent the month of June ensuring that he is physically and mentally ready to hit the ground running next week.
“Come the 31st of October, come hell or high water, I will not be playing professional rugby again,” he said yesterday. “So, if I give it everything I have and I don’t get picked then I can walk away from it going, ‘listen, I have had an amazing career’.
“I am absolutely busting a nut to get into the squad, and not just into the squad, but into the starting line-up.
“That’s my aim. You reach for the stars, if you get it then great but, if you don’t, the sun will come up tomorrow morning and there so many other amazing things going on in my life. I’ve a new baby and I have a beautiful wife and all these things.”
Schmidt will need to reduce his squad down to 31 by August 31. By then, most of the prep work and three of the squad’s four warm-up games will have come and gone. D’Arcy fell out of favour with Ireland last season as Schmidt opted for the new centre pairing of Jared Payne and Robbie Henshaw and, though happy with his form for Leinster, he is one of those with a fight to make it past the final cut.
“The form of those games is going to tell a lot: one, of this group of players, where their head and their mindset is at,” said D’Arcy. “Two, individually some guys will take steps forward and some will take steps back and that will come into the selection. In 2011, it was probably the first time we’ve seen guys who you would have said six months beforehand were almost definitely going and they didn’t go. So this part of it, (although) most lads know at this stage whether they’re in or out.”
Stuart Lancaster’s England will be one week ahead by the time Ireland get going, the hosts having gathered at their Pennyhill Park Hotel base last Monday in order to target fitness levels which their coach has argued will be key to success. The task facing a squad such as Ireland’s, a country with a limited playing base, can hardly be overestimated in that light and D’Arcy knows from his previous two tournaments that Ireland need every box ticked if 2015 is to be adjudged a success.
“We don’t have the luxury of being the number one ranked team in the world and having a pool of genetically perfect guys to play world rugby. We have to win games through the aggregate and through the numbers 1- 31.
“We’re going to have to be perfect, or as close to perfect, for seven games as we can be. That is hard, but if it was easy anybody could do it. if this is the hardest thing you do in your rugby playing career and you win a World Cup, why wouldn’t you do it? “
Gordon D’Arcy was speaking on behalf of Land Rover at Old Belvedere RFC where Land Rover and the Rugby World Cup 2015 Defender brought the Webb Ellis Cup as part of the 100 Day Tour of the UK and Ireland. Land Rover’s #WeDealInReal Rugby World Cup 2015 campaign will champion rugby’s grassroots by putting local clubs on the global stage. Follow @LandRoverRugby.
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