Nobody bounced for dead rubber

SIX NATIONS CHAMPIONSHIP/ENGLAND v IRELAND:IN KEEPING with the selection strategy of his tenure, Eddie O'Sullivan's response to Ireland's hugely disappointing performance against Wales was not to throw caution to the wind with a raft of experiments for this Saturday's somewhat anti-climactic finale to the RBS Six Nations against England in Twickenham.

The only change in personnel sees Geordan Murphy return at fullback in the continuing absence of Girvan Dempsey, pending a fitness test, and the ensuing ripple effect sees Robert Kearney move to the left and Tommy Bowe revert to the right wing, with Shane Horgan starting where he finished last Saturday, inside Andrew Trimble.

All else stays the same, including the bench, even though last Saturday once again cried out for the introduction of, say, Alan Quinlan, but instead the back five of the pack remained unaltered for 80 minutes.

Murphy trained for half an hour yesterday and will have another fitness test on his Achilles strain today. Were he ruled out, Kearney would start at fullback with Luke Fitzgerald on the wing and Gavin Duffy promoted to the bench, but O'Sullivan said he was "hopeful" Murphy would be fit to start.

The most notable change is arguably O'Sullivan's choice of Ronan O'Gara for the first time as captain, a surprise to the player himself and perhaps generally given Paul O'Connell has previously stood in for the hamstrung Brian O'Driscoll - and indeed did so at last Saturday's post-match press conference and banquet.

"He's captaincy material and has been one of the team leaders for years," said the coach. "It's not a massive leap. Ronan will share the load as well. Paul will be on the pitch with him and other guys will step up to the plate like Shane Horgan."

O'Sullivan's choice makes sense for, as he reasoned, O'Connell is short of match practice and O'Gara has had several months of captaining Munster with distinction. And in perhaps the most significant comment of the day, the new skipper vowed: "This weekend should be all about expressing ourselves and that will be the message I'll be trying to portray to the team. I think we have to try to go out and have a go. Let's go and play and if we're beaten by a better team we'll accept that.

"But the frustrating thing last weekend was that we didn't play rugby and we underperformed and we got beaten. But this weekend is an opportunity to show we can play."

O'Sullivan admitted he had given some thought to starting Fitzgerald outside Trimble, but - not unreasonably, given the Leinster tyro has played only one game there this season, for Ireland A - concluded: "he's had very limited experience at this level so I think dropping him into the middle of the Six Nations midfield without a real chance to settle in there would be unfair to him."

As an aside, Trimble has played virtually all his underage years and most of his adult games at outside centre or on the wing rather than at inside centre. Indeed, as has been evident for some time, there has no been no ready-made alternative to Gordon D'Arcy at inside centre, and of late O'Driscoll has taken up station there in defence and often in attack.

Horgan and Trimble are as strong and physical a pairing since the former was permed with Kevin Maggs in the absence of D'Arcy and O'Driscoll for the 40-13 win over Scotland in Murrayfield three years ago. With Murphy operating from behind, as at Leicester, then taking O'Gara at his word, one presumes the fullback will be used as a strike runner.

Given the normally limited scope for experimentation at this stage of the year, in different circumstances a head coach might have been more inclined to rotate his squad for a match with only an academic bearing on the championship. But O'Sullivan will again feel he's personally under pressure to obtain a win, and in repeating his assertion it was IRFU policy he underlined his status as a dutiful employee by stating, "I would support that position 100 per cent."

He pointed out that "in the four years between the World Cups, Ireland are second only to France in Six Nations wins. In fact, France have only won two more games than Ireland in the years 2004 to 2007 and that's where we set out our stall.

"So in that context you pick the best team to win in Twickenham. And by the way, no matter what happens on Saturday we'll still be second only to France in championship wins over the last five years."

Maintaining he was neither surprised nor unsurprised by England's results thus far - citing the vagaries of the Six Nations - the Ireland coach maintained he was happy to remain in the job and was not personally hurt by recent criticisms of his own performance.

"Criticism is criticism. There's a lot of opinion out there. There's a lot of people here today who have to write stuff and say things and it is opinion. Some of it is actually right, and its criticism is fair; some of it is wrong, some of it is informed, some of it is ill-informed.

"That's the nature of the business. Not everything everybody writes about me or the Irish team is accurate or true, or fair even.

"So if you're going to get hung up on that stuff you'd have a pretty miserable life sitting here. It's part of the job, it's human nature to get praise and criticised, but I can't get hung up on that. It's a miserable life if that becomes part of your day-to-day thinking.

"Am I hurt? No. Would I prefer to be praised? Yes. But if it happens, it happens, if it doesn't, it doesn't. It's not going to change my day."