O'Driscoll insists 'nothing changes'

ST PATRICK’S DAY and Christmas Eve are, apparently, the two busiest days of the year for the Killiney Castle Hotel. Families milled around the hotel yesterday but the Irish squad carried on in business-as-normal mode.

Brian O’Driscoll has seemed a slightly different person in this tournament, a little more relaxed in his own skin and his own place as Irish captain. Perhaps a new-found wisdom came with turning 30 in January; perhaps it’s the confidence that’s come with rediscovering some of his best rugby.

Winning four matches might have something to do with it too, but for whatever reasons he looks almost oblivious to the nation’s craving for a Grand Slam.

“Nothing has changed from our point of view. The team and opposition will be treated the same. Training will be treated the same. Our preparation will be the same. There is no point changing things just because there is a big carrot there. We will go with what we are comfortable with and what has worked. We haven’t been thinking about the might-be’s and the possibilities.”

Plenty of water, wins and defeats have passed under the bridge since the shoot-out with England six years ago and O’Driscoll and this team are scarcely recognisable now. He, Marcus Horan, John Hayes and Peter Stringer are the only starters from that day at Lansdowne Road. Paul O’Connell and Ronan O’Gara were on the bench.

“It’s hard to think back to that week. There have been so many games since. I know that was a big week with a carrot at the end of it. But you tend not to remember the not-so-great ones,” he added.

There is the possibility of Ireland losing but accepting the trophy as tournament winners, something they inflicted on England in 2001. “What’s the point of thinking about possible disappointment? It’s very simple, be positive, do everything in our power to put ourselves in a position to win . . . Win the game. Sin é.”

This approach is in contrast to the World Cup when Ireland tried to acknowledge, and responded to their own and the public’s expectations. “We’ve looked at it slightly differently,” he said. “We have treated each game as an entity in itself. We have done it every time in the Six Nations and it’s the same this week. I don’t think we are conscious of whether we are talking ourselves up or down.”

But c’mon, players’ minds are bound to wander? “I’m sure, individually, people’s minds might wander, when they are sitting in their room or going asleep. It’s human nature. But in terms of the things we are in control of as a squad and a team, our analysis, our preparation before a Test match, nothing changes.

“That’s the way we are approaching it. The fact there is big carrot at the end of it, it’s there, it’s the pink elephant in the room but why treat it any differently? As Deccie alluded to, what’s the reason for changing? It would mean we wouldn’t have done ourselves justice the previous weeks.” He’d like to think Ireland’s best performance is still to come, this being the big one, though as he countered: “The next one is always the big one.”