James Ryan: Romania job is about winning every moment

There can be no easing into the tournament for Ireland, warns James Ryan

Fri, 08 Sep, 2023 - 15:59

Simon Lewis, Bordeaux

James Ryan has urged his Ireland team-mates to seize the moment and rise to the occasion when they get their 2023 World Cup campaign underway against Romania on Saturday.

The Six Nations champions and world number one side have given themselves their best chance of making Irish rugby history by reaching the last four in the coming weeks following more than two years of blistering form under Andy Farrell.

The squad arrived in Bordeaux on Thursday with the head coach insisting Ireland were all business from here on in and the lock endorsed the sentiment at Stade de Bordeaux on Friday following the team’s eve of match training session at the stadium.

“We have had three big sessions on Saturday and Wednesday and Thursday this week, and before each session we've spoken about really starting to up it now,” Ryan said. "We're in France and this is what we have talked about now for quite a while, it's making sure we take a step forward this week.

"So definitely the pressure and expectation on the group and coaches alike have put on each other this week is that we put in a performance that we can take huge confidence from.

"I think we're in a good place heading into tomorrow, I thought we trained really well this week and trained hard as well. It's just making sure we recover today and we're excited for a huge day.”

Ryan said Ireland could not afford to build into the tournament and had to hit the ground running against the Pool B minnows, ranked 19th in the world.

“It’s definitely not about easing ourselves in. I think if we’re going to take this competition seriously I don’t think you can ease yourself into any game. We’ve got to go in with the right mentality.

“Tomorrow is about playing with real intent and putting in a performance that we know we’re capable of. We were a bit off in a couple of the pre-season games, and we didn’t hit that 80-minute performance we were looking for.

“Tomorrow for us is about winning every moment, or winning as many moments as we can. We don’t want to drift or lose 10 minutes or 15 minutes. We’re definitely striving for the full 80-minute performance tomorrow that we can be proud of, and hopefully give the Irish people there tomorrow something to cheer about.”

With temperatures at kick-off on Saturday afternoon set to reach 36C, World Rugby on Friday confirmed there would be water breaks taken in each half of every match across France this weekend.

Ryan believes Ireland have prepared well this summer in anticipation of the searing heat.

“We’ve had some sort of heat exposure during the summer in terms of the training camp over in Portugal, which was great for us. We got a good block of physical work done there. And we were over in Biarritz and we trained hard there too.

“I like to think we’ve gotten maybe more used to the heat. But you can’t hide from it. We talked about it a little bit this week, kick-off at three and it’s probably going to be the hottest part of the day. But for us, it can’t be an excuse. We’ve got to be able to manage the heat and that’s definitely the expectation coming from the coaches as well.”