Irish call in two psychologists

Sports being as much a battle of minds as bodies, the Irish management have adhered to a growing trend in international sport by enlisting the services of two sports psychologists to assist the Irish rugby squad.

Dr John Kremer, a senior lecturer in Queen's University Belfast, and Professor Aidan Moran, of University College Dublin, have been co-opted on to the management structure up to and including the game against the All Blacks at Lansdowne Road on November 15th.

Moran is a keen practitioner of sports psychology, and his involvement in this field includes working with Phyllis Nolan and Margaret Johnson, world pairs champions in bowls for the last six years.

Sheer pragmatism largely explained the decision, according to Irish manager Pat Whelan. "I'm determined to give the team every possible environment to enable them to prepare properly for international games."

With the intimidating thought of the All Blacks looming large on the horizon, Whelan added: "It's very often the case that that last 5 per cent makes the difference. Some Irish players are very confident by nature but some have less belief, especially in terms of the opposition they might be about to face.

"If these psychologists make the difference between winning and losing, then so be it. Whatever it takes, we're going to give the players. These psychologists are academics with practical experience and come highly recommended."

Johnson and Nolan will "come on board shortly" but in the meantime the technical stuff continued apace at the ALSAA complex near Dublin Airport yesterday. After Warren Gatland and Mike Ruddock had overseen set-piece practice with the forwards, it was a perceptibly more intense session, culminating in a lengthy 15-a-side work-out which concentrated on developing the team's running patterns off scrum and second-phase ball.

"We made a bit of progress today," observed a seemingly satisfied Brian Ashton. "In the realms of organisation what we focused on today from a backs' point of view was what we're likely to do from scrummage ball; with backs and back-row.

"The forwards went through again, and took it to a more advanced level, the principles of actually working against the All Blacks in terms of scrummaging and line-out work. What we did later on in the afternoon was try and put the scrummaging session in terms of what happens next after the scrums, into the team context.

"There's no doubt that we've taken steps forward, in terms of the pace and intensity of the sessions. When you look at the backs and you think that three front-line centres weren't out there this afternoon, I thought there was a reasonable sharpness about it."

The team to be selected for the seasonal opener against the All Blacks, now just five Saturdays away, will probably be announced in the next fortnight. "We've made a fair amount of progress but we've still one or two options in a couple of areas," said Whelan.

With that in mind, it's likely that the Irish management will offer another two or three full-time contracts in that time span and that these will come from the dozen additional players invited along yesterday.

These included the St Mary's quintet of Trevor Brennan, Victor Costello, Conor McGuinness, John McWeeney and Kevin Nowlan, as well as Jan Cunningham, Andy Ward, Allen Clarke and Alan Quinlan, with minor knocks restricting the involvement of Brian Cusack, Dominic Crotty and Mark McCall. Quinlan, for example, is attracting the interest of Bath, Cardiff and London Irish, with London Irish believed to have made a firm offer of a £35,000 contract.

Dylan O'Grady, Reggie Corrigan and Richard Wallace, unable to attend because of injury, might come into the equation, also bearing in mind the Ireland A v Canada match on November 26th.

Certainly, they all appear to have leapfrogged some of those offered contracts in the original squad of 35. Injured or unavailable were David Corkery, Barry McConnell, Simon Geoghegan and Jim Staples, who has returned to full fitness and whose training difficulties with Harlequins are likely to be resolved next week. Those not invited to attend yesterday were Richard Governey, Stephen Ritchie and the Garryowen trio of Killian Keane, Stephen McIvor and David Wallace.

Other original squad members restricted to a watching brief were Rob Henderson (dead leg), Mark McCall (bruised cheekbone), Jonathan Bell and Keith Wood. Wood, described as "run down", was told to take a rest and undergo a blood test on medical advice but the source of most concern may be Bell, who suffered a reaction to his troublesome hamstring after a first brief outing of the season for Northampton last Saturday and hasn't trained since.

Reflecting on the "mixed bag" of Irish performances in Europe, Ashton said: "The next target must be a play-off place in the European Cup." He also commented: "Connacht were a surprise to everyone but me. It's great to see."

Ashton said there were two reasons for the involvement of Gatland, the Connacht coach. "To have a look at the scrum because he's an ex-All Blacks front-row forward, so that was the first thing. And that's no disrespect to Mike (Ruddock) because Mike's still looking at the front-row area and I'm a great believer in using specialists if they're available."

"And the other thing of course is that he actually played with and against guys who are coming on tour with the All Blacks, so he's ideal to talk one-on-one with players, especially up front, about what they're likely to come up against on the field."

England coach Clive Woodward has shrugged off suggestions that he is under the same pressure to get results as the England football manager Glenn Hoddle.

Woodward welcomed the forthcoming Tests against Australia, New Zealand (twice) and South Africa as a rare opportunity to find out just how good his revamped 41-man England squad can be against the best sides in the world.

"I understand what Glenn is saying (about the intense demands of football) but I haven't been in this job long enough to experience that or to talk about pressure. At the moment I'm doing a normal day's work, nothing more than a businessman would expect, but I think the pressure will build up as the games get closer and the season unfolds," said Woodward.

Woodward said that the Tests on four successive Saturdays, beginning with Australia at Twickenham on November 15th, would be treated by the coaching staff as an internal England tour, with the elite squad that was announced this week remaining together for the whole period. An A team squad might involve up to 30 players.