Croke Park offers new test for O'Gara

Until this morning's early session for the Irish team, Ireland's Ronan O'Gara had kicked no more than 20 balls on the Croke Park pitch in preparation for Ireland's second game of their Six Nations campaign against France on Sunday.

For a specialist place kicker and one of the finest in the world, we can only imagine O'Gara's anxiety to get back on the pitch and work with the stadium and elements he has been given.

Every ground requires reference points for place kickers. The wide skylines, the steeped terraces and the distance between the pitch and the crowd, they all come into play as O'Gara lines up the wind, the angles and the velocity he has to punt the ball.

Lansdowne Road, the ground he had become familiar with over the years, was notoriously difficult for kickers because of the swirling winds that often presented the odd phenomenon of some of the corner flags blowing in different directions at the same time.

O'Gara now has today's session and tomorrow to work out the vagaries that the GAA stadium could present. "I haven't been there (Croke Park) again. I need to get there. Yeah. I've still only taken about 20 kicks," said O'Gara on Wednesday at the team hotel in Dublin.

"I've a bit of work to do over the next few days. I've got to work out things and try to establish some familiarity. Kicking in somewhere like Thomond Park is now easy for me because I know my ends, I know my boundaries, I know my targets. This is like going and playing on an away pitch in a certain regard."

Given the time needed to work out all of the new aspects, the Croke Park venue is certain to have a levelling effect.

It is highly likely that Ireland's outhalf will have kicked more balls in the Millennium Stadium, Stade Français or Twickenham than he will have had before stepping on to the pitch at the home of Gaelic games.

"You know definitely it will take a bit of getting used to because it's probably like playing in somewhere like Australia in terms of an oval because the touchline will probably be marked a little bit more in compared to your normal rugby pitch.

"Yeah, I'm anxious to get back, I'm looking forward to it. I didn't kick into both ends yet and the end I didn't kick into is meant to be more difficult . . . not the Hill, the other end, the Canal end."

After last week's kicking that fractured somewhat in the first half under intense Welsh pressure, O'Gara now comes under the added burden of needing to get back to his normally metronomic consistency in an unfamiliar venue.