THE IRELAND SQUAD have been put through their paces out in Abbotstown for the last few weeks but the learning hasn’t been confined to those lacing up their boots.
As Ireland forwards coach Paul O’Connell highlighted during an afternoon media briefing on Tuesday, this is his first pre-season working with the squad. As such, his voice has been a valuable addition as Andy Farrell looks to ensure the summer of 2023 isn’t retrospectively viewed in the same light as the summer of 2019, where Ireland looked tired and low on confidence even before jetting out to Japan.
This time around, there has been a greater focus on working with the ball and giving players time and space away from camp. So far, the sounds out of Abbotstown have been overwhelmingly positive, with the nature of the work being done a world away from the early pre-season camps O’Connell experienced as a player.
“In the early days it was all running,” says O’Connell.
“You can run yourself into the ground, it’s actually easy to do, you don’t have to think about anything, you don’t have to think about the defence in front of you, or the attacking shape, or the lineout you’ve to call in 20 seconds.
It’s actually easy to mind-numbingly run yourself into the ground and that’s what it was.
“Then it went to conditioning games because we wanted to get the ball in our hands a little bit more. Now, for us anyway, it’s down to, I suppose, trying to play our games, with various constraints in it that makes it a little bit fun, or makes it harder, or makes it easier, for you to break or defend. I’d say that the way most teams have gone.
“You’re taking pictures all of the time in rugby. As a defender you’re taking a picture of the attack and as an attacker you’re taking a picture of the defence. The more experience and the more practice you get of taking those pictures within your game and your style of doing things, the better you get at it. That’s what we were able to give these guys during the summer, opportunities to build their ability to take pictures and then make the right call on the back of that.
“That’s probably the big change but it’s still a progression from the way we used to do things. You have to get the running into them as well and that’s a challenge because if you do 10 more runs, you know exactly how much running you’ve done and you know exactly where you’ve been. But when you’re playing 15-a-side or whatever in training and there’s been a few balls put down or whatever, or there’s a little bit of coaching and the intensity can go out of it, that’s the coaching challenge of this type of pre-season.”
Ireland’s World Cup preparations ramp up this week with the opening warm-up game against Italy [Saturday, KO 8pm]. Many of the squad will be happy to just come through the games fit and healthy but for others, these run-outs represent an important opportunity to try book a seat on the plane to France.
O’Connell explains that throughout the summer, the coaching staff have been ensuring no player is over-exerting themselves in an effort to catch the eye.
“I really like the way we’ve managed this pre-season,” O’Connell continues.
I think we had players back in the day who probably needed to be protected from themselves a little bit more in terms of how they train.
“We’d a few guys who were capable of overdoing it a little bit and could have been a little bit flat come the games for pre-season. I’m really confident we haven’t done that with the players.
“I’m confident that they will say it’s a hard pre-season but I hope they wouldn’t say that it was the hardest pre-season that they’ve ever done. I would hope they’ve had to think a lot when they’ve been trying to get fitter. I think that’s the best thing about this pre-season, that they’ve had to use their brains while they’ve been running hard and that’s what you have to be able to do in a rugby match and I think that’s what Irish rugby players do really well and have done really well in the last number of years.
“Hopefully my experience of some of those games where you didn’t feel right, you felt you were still in pre-season, hopefully it’s a little bit different for these guys.
“I do think we do well when we’re in game-mode and we have games, have games to review and are preparing for games. It really sharpens the coaches but it sharpens the players as well. Hopefully we’ll get to experience that in August.”
Farrell named a 42-man training squad for the pre-season, with that number to be cut down to 33 at the end of the month. One man who didn’t get the call was Munster lock Jean Kleyn, who has since joined up with his native South Africa and won his first Test cap for the Springboks. Having represented Ireland five times back in 2019, Kleyn could now be lining out against them in the pool stages at the World Cup.
“He was very close (to making the Ireland summer squad),” O’Connell admits.
“He’s very experienced now, experienced different coaching staffs with Munster. He was part of a really successful Munster team this year and he does what he does really well. He’s an excellent mauler, excellent maul-defender. I think his ball-handling and his defence has improved massively now in the last few years. He looked very comfortable playing for Munster. The forwards were asked a little bit more of them this year and he was very comfortable.
“It was close, it was tight, I suppose some of the guys we had in the squad already, we felt we’d invested a good bit in them already, they were a little bit younger, they were quite big men as well in their own right. He went away and he’s entitled to go for what he went for and I wish him all the best.”
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