Hitting your jumpers and missing theirs

Rugby Clash of the hookers: The primary collision in billing terms on Sunday at Lansdowne Road will be that of Ireland and England in the Six Nations Championship but the subplots to the main feature will be no less intriguing. In a Lions' year personal duels take on additional piquancy.

Ireland's Shane Byrne and his English counterpart Steve Thompson are acknowledged as front runners for a Lions Test jersey during the summer, so Sunday's confrontation may rationalise a pecking order. There are few areas that stand up to direct comparison when gauging a hooker's influence but one obvious aspect is lineout throwing.

Last year at Twickenham the English lineout, under huge pressure from the Irish jumpers, imploded and Thompson caught most of the flak. This season he's had to bear the brunt of the criticism but it is a measure of the man that he refuses to be cowed.

"I have got one of those reputations about my throwing arm. I miss a couple, the other hooker misses a couple, but people just talk about me. I take it on the chin. I am not going to start going into my shell and not enjoy playing for England. It's a great experience."

Byrne would empathise. "When lineouts go wrong (it sounds like a Sky docudrama), it is a unit thing. That was one of the problems I encountered when I first joined the Irish set-up. The hooker was just getting blamed point blank for everything, which was wrong. And Frankie (Sheahan) suffered from that (perception) as well.

"Lifters have to get it right, so too jumpers, the call has to be correct, you have to get the movement right and the jumper has to be in the right spot. Then it's down to the hooker to deliver the ball to that spot. That is the way throwing is.

"You have got to practice your routine and try and guarantee that when the ball has left you hand you have done everything to make sure that it goes to where it's supposed to: the trick is to miss the opposition. That is the essence of successful lineout throwing. It doesn't have to be a glorious spiral that's taken at the height of the arc, it could be the ugliest throw ever. As long as it misses the opposition I don't care."

Byrne, too, has known dark days out of touch. In the Heineken European Cup Bath pilfered Leinster's throw much as they pleased as everything that could go wrong in this aspect of the game from the Irish province's perspective did on that afternoon.

Byrne admitted: "That is exactly the way the day went. Sometimes it can be any one of several different components of the lineout that malfunctions.

"That day in the Rec, everything went wrong and I have never come across that before. We had a big sit down afterwards and sorted it out for the next game. Part of that process was looking to see if we had made the wrong calls.

"We looked at each lineout and could honestly say that the calls were right nine times out of 10 but the execution was just way off.

"The players were free for a split second but the ball just didn't arrive there for a variety of reasons. It wasn't a breakdown of the lineout in terms of what we were trying to do but rather the execution."

Byrne though has earned and deserves a reputation of being very accurate but this tends to camouflage the impact he has in other facets of the game. "No one wants to be a one trick pony. You would hope that the people who select teams and coach teams notice the other aspects of your game.

"But it's about the team not me. We have fantastic ball carriers, people like Anthony Foley and Paul O'Connell, but there's donkey work to be done too. You concentrate on doing what's right for the team."

As to the duel with Thompson, Byrne smiles: "It would definitely be something in the background. Hookers very seldom meet on the pitch, bar scrum time. If I come across him, in that split second there'll be that recognition."

At 33, the Aughrim native isn't yet ready for the SAGA holiday, hasn't bought the condo for the Sunshine years experience in Florida.

"Every time I get to put on that green jersey I have to pinch myself. The novelty of that never wears off. When you come in after the warm up and you reach up to take down the jersey from the peg and put it on, it's a special feeling, brilliant. I have never experienced anything like it.

"Why in the name of God would you think of retiring, now. I feel better than I have ever felt. This is a fantastic time to be involved. I'm going to keep going and see what happens. As for the Lions, I'd love to be there, on the plane with a big grin on my face. But that's for others to decide. My focus is Sunday."