SEAN O’BRIEN WAS summoned from the Ireland bench sooner than his coaches would have liked but showed no ill-effects of a two week injury lay-off.
Lay-off is an apt way to describe it as the flanker rolled an ankle in training and Leinster erred on the side of caution by resting him against Connacht. O’Brien linked up with his Irish teammates at Carton House in late October but was not thrown into contact until last Tuesday.
He hit his training ground markers and was named on the bench against Samoa. Similar player management saw Cian Healy and Paul O’Connell join him there. All three featured in Saturday’s 40-9 win with O’Brien scoring a second-half try after replacing Chris Henry on 25 minutes.
Forwards coach John Plumtree said, “I thought Sean played really well. He got a bit more time, with Chris’ injury, but he looked like he really enjoyed himself out there. The plan was to give Paul 20, 35 minutes and he was very effective — stole a couple of balls, put in a couple of really nice tackles. I think he got bumped over once, which he wouldn’t have been too happy with. Both will be pretty excited ahead of the weekend.”
Coming from a Super Rugby background, where rolling mauls are an oft-used weapon, Plumtree was delighted with the 20-metre maul that led to Peter O’Mahony’s first-half try. “Samoa didn’t offer a lot of contest there and that should be a lot different this weekend,” he said. “I was pleased to see some of the aspects that we were working on coming through but I was a little disappointed with one or two other opportunities we had that we didn’t nail as well.” Plumtree added:
You’ve got to remember that Australia have been playing against the New Zealands and South Africas regularly, who like those [mauling] aspects of the game, so they’re better technically at stopping that. If we want to score a try like that at the weekend we’ll have to be very effective.”
Australia may have demoted James Horwill from captain to mere second-row but the Queensland Reds player prides himself as a mean lineout operator and will seek to lead his side in that department.
“Defence starts at first phase,” said Plumtree, “so we’ve got to get our pods [jumpers] up and apply pressure. We can’t just give them what they want.”
