WORLD CUP COUNTDOWN:Donncha O'Callaghan enthuses about the welcome but stresses to GERRY THORNLEYin Queenstown just how focused the squad are
IF NOTHING else, the Ireland squad probably couldn’t have kicked off their 2011 World Cup odyssey better or in a more idyllic backdrop than Queenstown.
After their grim sequence of four defeats last month, this certainly isn’t Ireland and, according to one Welsh man who has been living here for 18 years, it’s not typical of New Zealand either.
The adventure capital of the world, where bungee jumping was invented, relies almost exclusively on year-round tourism and accordingly, the 15,000 or so inhabitants are commercially pro-active as well as being artistically creative.
But like the rest of this “four million stadium”, Queenstown is in a tizzy at the prospect of hosting what is, for all and sundry with a vested interest claim, the third biggest sports event of the year and hence, with no matches per se, all the more so in having the Irish squad start their preparations here.
Yesterday, the squad were treated to a Powhiri (pronounced po-feerie), the traditional Maori welcome, at the Skyline Gondola Luge, with its panoramic view of the sun-kissed, snow-peaked Remarkables (officially, it has three peaks, though it looks more like about 20) and Coronet Peak, its reflections bounding off the stunning Lake Wakatipu.
To reach their civic welcome, the squad had to take cables, known locally as gondolas, each of which can take four at a time (though at a push they can manoeuvre 1,000 people in an hour). Only en route did it suddenly dawn on video analyst Mervyn Murphy that he was accompanying Tony Buckley, Donncha O’Callaghan and Stephen Ferris. Hmmm.
Brian O’Driscoll found the Powhiri as spine-tingling as ever, on this his sixth visit to New Zealand but first to Queenstown, and vowed to return one day for a proper holiday, while team manager Paul McNaughton hailed the nearby base as worthy of the description “God’s Country”, and the facilities as world class.
McNaughton claimed bungee jumping had been outlawed but O’Driscoll revealed any attempted ban had been ignored by some. The Mayor of Queenstown, Vanessa van Uden, wished the squad a “Céad Míle Fáilte”, while also hailing O’Driscoll and co as “an absolute delight” to host.
The Irish squad were presented with a solid slab of pounamu, a slate which is tougher than iron, and in response to the civic welcome Denis Leamy led the squad in a rendition of Ride On, while O'Driscoll presented Van Uden with Waterford Crystal.
If the All Blacks were not to win, he implored the locals to “get behind this small little country and cheer us to victory”.
With many compatriots (who had emulated our Welsh friend in staying here longer than intended) amongst those present, that went down well.
“This place is like something you see on a postcard,” observed O’Callaghan fairly accurately. “It reminds me of the place I went to for my honeymoon in Switzerland. I had good memories there and hopefully I’ll have good memories from here to.
“The welcome we got was incredible. There was the Maori welcomes, all of the school kids who came out to see us and then the crazy Irish Paddies who live here! The reception gave us a perk up and gets us excited for the tournament. There seems to a lot of Irish out – hiding from our recession!”
Today is a down day but thereafter we’re into match week, with the squad moving on to New Plymouth on Thursday for Sunday’s opener against the USA before the Australian game at Eden Park six days later.
Of their worrisome form to date, O’Callaghan reasoned: “There are things in those warm-up games that we just wouldn’t normally do. Against England we went to play a friendly and they came to play a Test match. The result shows that mindset is so important going into massive games. At the World Cup we’ll be fighting for our lives from minute one to minute 80 and that’s not a bad place for an Irish team to be.
“If we start looking beyond the first game, which we did four years ago, we’ll fall flat on our face. Hopefully we’re in a better place now. You don’t want to get to the biggest competition of your life and fall flat on your face. The scars of France have stayed with us all. It was a scarring event in our career.
“It was hugely disappointing because you arrive with such promise and all the dreams of going well. So to come up short – there’s no worse feeling. It took me a lot of time to get over that and some of us still haven’t.
“A lot of us pretend 2007 was a leap year, that nothing actually happened during that year! We might as well have taken a year out given the way we played. We have a good squad with good players but we haven’t done ourselves justice.
“This is the big show, there is nothing bigger than a World Cup. This is the one we’ve been dreaming of since we were kids.”
This latest World Cup cycle has also yielded three Irish Heineken Cup successes and, of course, a Grand Slam.
“There come times in your career when you have to front up. We managed that in the Grand Slam game against Wales.
“Before people thought Irish teams choke at big events. That was a result that we over-turned that perception. Big games can be the highlight of your career, or the most scarring event.
“In terms of personal drive, there will be a few players who will be thinking ‘this could be my last shot so I want to empty my bag’. If everyone gives everything and comes away feeling they couldn’t have done any more, it’s all you can ask.”
All bar the injured and hence tardy Cian Healy and Gordon D’Arcy were in attendance yesterday to be presented with their World Cup caps by the IRB president Syd Millar, which gave the Ballymena man obvious pleasure.
Millar was visiting Queenstown for the first time since a three-day break from the 1959 Lions tour to Australia. Earlier, on arrival at the airport, he had recalled how the ’59 Lions had travelled from London via Zurich, Beirut, Bombay, Calcutta, Singapore, Darwin and Sydney to Melbourne. It took them three days.
Mind you, in 1959, the Lions required six weeks to travel by boat en route to a four month-plus tour of New Zealand and Australia, not to mention the six-week return journey.
