IRELAND CAPTAIN PAUL O’Connell is not taking it for granted that his body will endure the demands he places on it until the 2015 Rugby World Cup rolls around.
The 34-year-old has suffered several serious injuries over the course of his career, and while he is currently enjoying a free run at pre-season with Munster, remains cautious over declaring that he will definitely be available to play in a fourth World Cup.
“Look, I’d love to go to the World Cup but it’s something you only want to do if you’re in really good shape,” says O’Connell. ”I’d love to go there with two big pre-seasons [behind me] – this pre-season and next summer’s pre-season. If I could get there with those, I know I’d go in really good shape.
But the game is becoming tougher and tougher, it’s going to be a really tough Autumn internationals and really tough Six Nations, so really the World Cup for me is a long way away.
“It’s really about managing my body as best I can, try and be in the best shape I can for the autumn, the best shape I can for the Six Nations and see where I go from there. Yeah, I wouldn’t say there’s any long-term plans in place.”
That said, Joe Schmidt will be keen to do everything in his power to ensure that O’Connell does deal with the physical demands of the coming season.
After enjoying a superb first year at the helm of the national team, the Kiwi head coach now faces the task of maintaining momentum all the way into September 2015, when Ireland face Canada, Romania, Italy and France in Pool D of the tournament.
“In fairness to Joe, I remember one of the first things he said was that he wanted to just see gradual improvement all the time, both as individuals and as a team,” says O’Connell. “I think it’s a great way to look at it.
“It’s one thing I’ve realised, you never take these massive jumps and maintain it. I think it’s important to keep stepping forward all the time and we probably didn’t do that in Argentina [in June]. I think it’s important to keep improving all the time, even if it’s by the smallest margins.”
Ireland have lost forwards coach John Plumtree since the end of the season, with the New Zealander having made an impressive impact during his short stay. Schmidt has moved to install former international back row Simon Easterby in Plumtree’s stead.
Having played with Easterby for Ireland, as well as against his Scarlets’ team, O’Connell is in as good a position as anyone to judge the new addition.
I think it is a great appointment. Simon was a brilliant line-out player back when he played with Ireland. He’s obviously very, very experienced. He’s done great work with Llanelli in recent years on probably a reduced budget,” outlines O’Connell.
“We played them in the Heineken Cup two years ago and they’re probably one of the most trickiest teams to defend against, they’re probably the cleverest team in the competition in what to do around the breakdown. In terms of what they do in mauls, they’re a really clever side and they keep you guessing.”
“A lot of that would be down to Simon. He has really good experience as a head man with Llanelli, as a forwards coach with Llanelli, defence coach with Llanelli, and also a lot of international caps for Ireland as well. So I think it’s a really good appointment for Ireland.”
O’Connell is pleased with the balance in Ireland’s current coaching staff, with Grek Feek controlling the scrum, Schmidt working the breakdown and attack, Les Kiss controlling defence and Easterby set to lead the line-out as well as contributing elsewhere.
So what do Ireland need to improve on if they are to head to the 2015 World Cup with realistic title ambitions? O’Connell feels a valuable lesson was learned in Argentina in that regard.
If you’re to go back to the tour, I think we gave away some very easy points whereby we were on the Argentinian line several times, small turnovers, they hacked the ball the length of the field or whatever, and you’re under pressure.
“Good teams don’t do that. When they’re in the opposition 22, they make it count with points and they go back, receive the kick-off, and the next time they play is in the opponent’s half again and the pressure is on them.
“I don’t think in Argentina we were good at maintaining the pressure. I think in international rugby, that’s a big part of what you have to do. You keep referring back to Leinster because they’re a reference point under Joe; I think one of the big things they did was they were always able to go into the opponent’s 22 and score tries.
“It’s a real way to keep the foot on the throat of opposition teams and, at times, we just didn’t do that in Argentina. We were playing some really good rugby on the opponent’s 22, the opponent’s 30 anyway, and we turned the ball over and had to soak up a lot of pressure. I think against bigger teams you struggle when you do that.”
