BACK IN PAUL O’Connell’s playing days, particularly earlier in his Ireland career, there were times when they dipped too far into the emotional well.
They’d sometimes produce manic, fierce performances on the back of that emotional focus. Indeed, O’Connell himself used to demand it from his team-mates.
But the highs produced on those occasions would often be followed by lows as Ireland struggled to go there again the weekend after. It might have been good for the odd landmark win, but it wasn’t great for consistency.
The current Ireland team go to that well from time to time, of course, but O’Connell admires how it’s not the foundation of their approach. In his role as forwards coach, the former Munster lock enjoys how Andy Farrell’s players have become consistent in their ability to back up big performances.
It has them on a 16-game winning streak at the moment and Ireland hope to make it 17 against Scotland in Saturday’s crucial World Cup Pool B clash.
“I think being able to not rely massively on emotions is a big part of it,” said O’Connell this afternoon in Tours.
“It’s always a big strength of ours how much the lads love playing for Ireland, how important the history of the team is, you would have seen that during the Six Nations where we had a great week before we played France where we had a discussion about the anthems.
“The lads love playing for each other, they love playing for Ireland, they love pulling on the jersey and what it means and all that. But that’s the icing on the cake now rather than the whole cake.
“In fairness, it would have come in under Joe [Schmidt] and that ability to just be focused on what’s right in front of you and not what’s too far ahead of you.
“I think they have a big appetite around just getting better and improving, both individually and as a group, and when you get into just getting better, when the focus is all about getting better, you acknowledge the significance of what might happen if you win a game at the weekend for sure, but you’re kind of able to ignore it a little bit then as well.”
O’Connell said Ireland are viewing Saturday night’s game as a knock-out tie. They know the permutations involved but their only goal is winning against the Scots.
They will treat Gregor Townsend’s side with respect but, as ever, Ireland’s focus is far more on themselves and their own performance. That approach has been successful for them so far.
“We just have to get better,” said O’Connell. “I think that’s one of the things the lads are really good at, they’re really good at staying focused on the next game and not looking beyond it.
“They kind of acknowledge, you know, whenever we’ve been on tour down in New Zealand or whenever we’re playing in the Six Nations, in terms of having a chance of winning it, they acknowledge it, they might have a quick chat about it, and that allows them to focus on what’s in front of them.
“Staying focused on this game and absolutely nothing else is a skillset they’ve gotten really good at.
“Then we’ve just got to get better. There’s a lot of things that we were excellent at against South Africa but there’s a lot of things we can improve on in terms of our attack, in terms of our defence, in terms of ruck, lineout obviously.
“So there’s always bits to get better at and that’s what I think sometimes helps the lads kind of tune out the noise a little bit of what might happen after the game. They enjoy focusing on the bits and pieces that help them be better and they can ignore the bigger picture of the game at the weekend.”
While Farrell and performance coach Gary Keegan lead much of the mental work, O’Connell clearly contributes heavily too. But along with that, his technical and tactical expertise is important to Ireland.
The lineout is one of O’Connell’s responsibilities and he hopes to see an improvement on the 67% return on their own throw last time out.
“Against South Africa, it was a tough start, they were good defensively, we were probably poor on our behalf on the drill, and they managed to sneak an extra man in for one of the lineouts close to their line which was disappointing, but fair play to them,” said O’Connell.
“They were really good at the start of the game. What I was really delighted with was how the lads worked through it, how Rónan Kelleher and the lineout leaders worked through it, figured it out, and got us back on track.
“Mainly it’s just been about having a look at where things have gone wrong. We haven’t trained any differently or done anything differently really, it’s been a real good learning for the lads and luckily for us, those learnings have come in games that we’ve won.
“We’re against a real good lineout side this weekend again who can cause problems for teams and I’m sure they’ll cause us a few problems as well and it will just be down to how we react and how we handle them.”