Ireland’s band of brothers ready to face All Blacks head on

Peter O’Mahony’s All Blacks experience has run the full spectrum of emotions in his eight years as a Test international.

From the despair of a 60-0 defeat in Hamilton in 2012 to the ecstasy of a historic first home victory 11 months ago, via the heartbreak of a last-minute 24-22 defeat in 2013, there has never been a dull moment in his encounters with the world’s best.

Yet the Munster, Ireland, and Lions flanker knows Saturday’s encounter will be different again because, he said yesterday, playing New Zealand in a World Cup quarter-final is a “different animal” entirely.

Memories of those recent encounters since Joe Schmidt took charge of Ireland are of four titanic contests, two wins apiece, with O’Mahony playing in the first in 2013 and in most recent of those last November.

“You look back and it’s so different now. You certainly take confidence from those performances but on the flip side it’s a different animal,” O’Mahony said. “A World Cup is different and they’re a different squad now, as we are, and it’s just its own little cup battle for both teams.

“These are the weeks that you work so hard for and you certainly look back on them, whatever way the result goes. Every time you play them it’s probably got to be a step up from your best performance. They draw that out of teams through their quality and their performances.

You need to cut down your mistakes and you see from the Rugby Championship and from playing them ourselves — you turn the ball over to them and they’ll lap it up and you’ll be under your sticks. So it’s about keeping your error count down and it’s about having a fairly complete performance to get amongst them.

Today marks the four-month anniversary since O’Mahony and the rest of Ireland’s 46-man training squad first went into camp at Carton House on June 16.

As the Ireland vice-captain confirmed, it is a long time to be in one another’s pockets, but if anything is going to bring out the very best in this group for as close to a complete performance as possible on Saturday in Tokyo, it is their togetherness, a unity that has grown exponentially since day one.

“A huge amount. We’ve grown very close,” O’Mahony said. “There’s guys who I’d be very, very close to now. We started on June 16 and we’re nearly into November, and we’ve been living in each others’ pockets. You get to know guys really well and it’s incredible fun. We’ve had some great craic together. It means that little more to you again to play for guys who understand what’s going on in each other’s lives.”

That connection also, he agreed, makes life easier when things are not going so well, as was the case midway through the pool campaign when Ireland were beaten by Japan in Shizuoka.

“Yeah, it does because you fall back on each other. It’s easy to spend the good times together but they are the moments you want the lads to be around, particularly when you’re away from home.

“It’s different when you have the distractions and sometimes it’s even hard during a Six Nations to get those distractions from home but over here we’re on our own, we’re very conscious that we are very important to each other for all those scenarios and you fall back on each other in (testing) moments like that. And you get stronger as a group from moments like that as well.”

O’Mahony never had the opportunity to stake his claim to a place in the quarter-final side to play Argentina four years ago, having suffered a serious knee injury against France the previous weekend. Understandably he is savouring the experience this time around.

“It’s very special, I was at home last time. I went back out (to Cardiff) on the Thursday or Friday, but it’s nice to get a shot at the biggest week of all of our careers. Certainly, in my professional career, it’s the biggest week.

"They seem to get bigger and bigger and they certainly don’t get any bigger than this. I haven’t had this opportunity before, so pending selection, it would be a huge honour. I’m feeling great, we’d a great session and we take huge confidence from the way we train.”