Paul O'Connell not interested for now in Munster head coach job
NOT FOR BUDGING: Ireland forwards coach Paul O'Connell before the Autumn Nations Series match between Ireland and Fiji. Pic: Ben McShane/Sportsfile
First things first. Paul O’Connell has no interest right now in the Munster job. That’s worth pointing out given the flurry of news about contracts for assistant coaches and speculation over possible successors to Graham Rowntree this week.
“No, I have no interest in it,” the province’s former captain and current Ireland forwards coach confirmed on Tuesday afternoon. “Certainly in the short-term anyway. I just hope they get the right man.”
It’s common for players and coaches to bat away all talk of possible futures and distant pasts on big weeks like this where the focus will be very much on Ireland finishing the November internationals with a third win from four games.
That’s not easy done when the opposing head coach is Australia’s Joe Schmidt.
The former Leinster and Ireland boss spent a decade on these shores, most of it raising the bar for the game here. O’Connell only had him as a boss for the last two years of his Test career but the impact the Kiwi made on him, as on everyone else, was profound.
Cue the trip down Memory Lane.
“I was older when Joe came to Ireland. One of the things he was good at is letting you know what he expected of you, then you could go and chase that down. You knew that if you delivered A, B and C, you had a good chance of being picked.
“I probably stopped trying to be a second-row that I was seeing on TV that was doing things really well and trying to copy that. I knew what I had to be good at. I really enjoyed that. He was very clear in how he coached.”
O’Connell credits Schmidt with moving the Irish game on from raw emotion. Plus, the technical side of Schmidt’s game was razor sharp, his attention to detail was off the charts, and his ability to make himself understood peerless after years of teaching in classrooms.
There is still language and other “bits and pieces” of Schmidt’s influence in everyday use in Ireland camp to this day, including his take on the breakdown which became an area of absolute importance to the game plan bolted on to his Ireland sides.
The lineout was another crucial cog.
Think back now to how many of Ireland’s standout and key tries emanated from strike plays from out of touch, for instance. The lineout’s primacy continued when O’Connell started work under Andy Farrell but it has been less dependable the last 12 or 13 months.
The man himself admits as much.
“It's been up and down. We have gotten value out of it, certainly when we have been close to the line, but we have probably combined one or two bad calls with one or two bad throws, and maybe one or two calls that shouldn't have been part of the plan at all.
“So, that has been frustrating because the lads are good. When we give them quality ball, whether it's the forwards or the backs, they have been good with it. Lineout pressure across the world has increased, but we can certainly be a lot better than we have been.”
There are different spokes in this wheel.
Peter O’Mahony’s game time has reduced, for instance, with all the influence he brought to bear over such decisions, Tadhg Beirne is still in relatively early days as a caller at Test level, and the hookers have changed a fair bit too.
That’s life, though. Players come and they go. Joe McCarthy has crowbarred himself into the second-row, while the likes of Sam Prendergast, Gus McCarthy, Thomas Clarkson and Cormac Izuchukwu have inserted themselves into the picture as well.
Meanwhile, Tadhg Furlong, Jamie Osborne, Jacob Stockdale and Ryan Baird have all been ruled out of the game against Australia at the weekend which is being played to celebrate the IRFU’s 150th anniversary.
Also, Dave Heffernan has been released back to Connacht, Nick Timoney has returned to Ulster, with Jack Boyle and Alex Kendellen making the same journeys to Leinster and Munster respectively.
Like the lineout, this window as a whole has been up and down but O’Connell strikes a positive note as the last bars approach against the Wallabies.
“I think we know what we stand for, which is an important part of a team, that you know exactly what you want to do, you're pretty clear on how you want to play the game, be it what you do at the ruck or what you do in defence or what you do in attack.
“Then it's just about getting more and more players comfortable with that, comfortable at delivering that, comfortable at driving that, because every campaign we have, when we review it, we generally come away thinking that the ceiling is so high.
“It's evolution, but it doesn't need to be complicated for it to get better.”
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