REACTION PAUL O'CONNELL:THE EXPLOSION of adrenaline that allowed Paul O'Connell to gambol his way towards the touchline, arms windmilling, after Geordan Murphy had administered the last rites to Welsh hopes by touching down in Ireland's in-goal area was an amalgam of joy and relief.
Grand Slam aspirations had sporadically tantalised Ireland teams since the country’s one and only triumph in 1948 and on Saturday night in Cardiff as Welsh outhalf Stephen Jones lined up a last minute 45-metre penalty, O’Connell feared Declan Kidney’s Ireland team were about to become another historical footnote to failure. Mitigation in performance terms would have rung hollow.
Some 90 minutes later, tuxedo-clad and looking remarkably fresh for someone who had been at the epicentre of the shuddering physicality that permeated this Six Nations collision at the Millennium, O’Connell spooled through the memories of Saturday’s endgame.
He was convinced Jones would pilfer a win for Wales, so much so he didn’t watch the flight of the ball. “I thought we’d lost it; I thought it would go over. When he hit it I knew it was on target. I didn’t look at the ball in flight. I just saw Geordan getting excited when it was coming up short. Geordan caught it, I looked up at the clock and saw it was in the red and knew it was game over.
“He was just saying ‘short, short, short’ or whatever. He caught it and ran away and banged it out. If we’d closed out the game like we should have in the last few minutes I think celebrations could have been a bit more muted but the way it ended up happening, we ended up going insane.”
Donning a giant leprechaun hat for the lap of honour would probably be considered damning evidence.
O’Connell produced a towering individual display, filching Welsh lineouts, carrying ball time and again, often several times in one passage of play and thundering into tackles, omnipresent in his influence. It wasn’t just the physical attributes but his mental resolve that nudged Ireland over the finishing line.
He never doubted Ireland would get one more opportunity after Jones’ drop goal four minutes from time threatened to be the decisive act of the night. “There is always time for one more opportunity, be it a penalty, a drop goal or anything. I’m very confident of closing games out normally. That’s bread and butter to a lot of us, closing those tight games out.
“When he (Jones) knocked over that drop goal, it was a bit of a shock but I thought we had time to get down there and get a shot on goal.
Luckily we did. Rog (Ronan O’Gara) slotted it; it was a manky one but it went over.”
O’Connell couldn’t explain why referee Wayne Barnes allowed Wales to target O’Gara, occasionally illegitimately, all afternoon but was quick to award penalties if an Ireland player reacted. “I thought it was a bit strange when Dunners (Donncha O’Callaghan) pushed Mike Phillips on the shoulder he got a penalty against him but they were allowed target Rog all day. There has to be consistency in refereeing. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case.
“He (O’Gara) loves that. He knows that is probably because he is the best player, the most influential player on the pitch so I don’t think it really bugs him.”
Contextualising just what the victory, Grand Slam, Six Nations Championship and Triple Crown means to the senior members of the team, O’Connell explained it extended far beyond a hankering from childhood playgrounds.
“I was asked if this was great because it was a dream going back to my schooldays or whatever. It’s not, it’s because there’s been a lot of heartache with Ireland over the last seven years, a lot of close calls. There was the disappointment of the World Cup and last year’s Six Nations. It was just great to put that all behind us.”
He was also invited to outline his thoughts on the pre-match banter instigated by Welsh coach Warren Gatland. O’Connell admitted: “I thought it was funny. I suppose Jose Mourinho used to do a lot of it with Chelsea, taking the pressure off his players. You need a big ego to do that, which he seems to have from his recent successes as a coach. He has to get his feet back on the ground now, I think.”
The Munster captain was quick to point out he doesn’t see Saturday’s triumph as the culmination of what this squad can achieve but rather as a starting point to kick on again.
“In the last three games we haven’t played fabulously well. We’ve just been clever in what we’ve done and just gone about winning games. That’s the most important thing and it’s something we lost track of before. We can develop here now. If you try to play expansive, sometimes you hit a wall and trying to develop from there is hard. In this Six Nations, we’ve relied a lot on our pack and I think it’s easier to build from there.
“Declan Kidney deserves a lot of credit. Deccie has the Midas touch. We’d a lot of meetings, trying to get players to say things, come out with different things. We’d a good meeting in Enfield over Christmas and a lot of bits were said. There was a good atmosphere. We’d Pádraig Harrington in that week and he was fairly inspirational and a bit of an atmosphere built from that weekend. I think those few days were important for the team.
“He’s (Kidney) done very well but so much of the good stuff we did today would have been stuff we’ve learned over the last seven or eight years with Eddie (O’Sullivan), Niallo (Niall O’Donovan), Steady (Graham Steadman), Mike Ford and Bryan McLaughlin. No doubt Declan has come in and done his thing very well, but a lot of the groundwork has been done in the last seven years. It’s good for everyone involved.”
