Side to face All Blacks looks settled

As revelations from the Irish management go, it's about the biggest thus far: they will decide today whether to announce next Saturday or Sunday the side to play New Zealand. By the end of the weekend then, the fun and the guessing games will be over.

As for its make-up, Sherlock Holmes might have struggled with the clues emanating from the management this season. But there may have been another couple of hints from yesterday's 30-man, two-and-a-half hour session at the ALSAA complex.

With the emphasis on defensive organisation for a change (as Brian Ashton observed later, it truly is amazing how little time is generally spent on this in training, given that sides will, in theory, be doing it 50 per cent of the time), the three-quarter line chosen to wear the blue padding was the same as last week's attacking unit.

With Johnny Bell (hamstring) again absent, and James Topping seemingly out of contention, the formation of Conor O'Shea at full-back, Dennis Hickie on the right wing, Rob Henderson and Mark McCall as left and right centres and John McWeeney on the left, may well be the line-up against the All Blacks.

A little intriguingly, the half-backs for the initial full-contact session were Brian O'Meara and David Humphries, generally deemed to be second choices. But the Connacht half-back pairing of Conor McGuinness and Eric Elwood were brought in for the final work-out and still appear to be the favoured pair.

Injuries to Eric Miller, Kieron Dawson, Gabriel Fulcher and Alan Quinlan curtailed their participation at various stages and made observations about the forward permutations difficult.

Nevertheless, the evidence points to a pack of Nick Popplewell, Keith Wood, Paul Wallace, Paddy Johns, Malcolm O'Kelly, David Erskine, Miller and Dawson.

Ashton, manager Pat Whelan and coselector Donal Lenihan re-convened yesterday evening and must be virtually agreed upon the team. All that awaits is crossing the Ts and dotting the Is.

To that end, according to Whelan, "We will be going to view the London Irish and Saracens match." This underlines the impression that the selectors are giving Richie Wallace every chance to prove his fitness for Saracens.

But Whelan was not unduly concerned about the quartet who sustained minor knocks yesterday. "I would imagine all will be available to play for their clubs this weekend."

Yesterday's session was "nearly all orchestrated toward the defence," admitted Ashton, a reasonably sensible notion given the world's best side are coming to town.

"It's an area that we've talked about without doing in any detail at all. In fact, it was quite interesting talking to the players beforehand, because they don't do any defensive work, which is an interesting fact."

Nothing concentrates the mind quite like having the ball in hand, all the more so on a bitterly cold day at the exposed ALSAA complex. "Like all defensive work they find it very difficult to concentrate. We set off, and for the first 15 minutes everything was fine. But then little holes started appearing," Ashton said.

"Because it's not a full game they find it difficult to defend as if it was a full game. Then we got a couple of injuries, which totally disrupted what was going on both in attack and defence. At least we got some points cleared up that we talked about before we came out.

"There were doubts in some players' minds about how we were going to defend in certain areas of the field. But we need to work and talk a little bit more about that."

Ashton revealed that he had "itemised 10 areas" at the start of his tenure, the "two most important being getting our set play right and getting our defence right. Get those two right and you become a difficult team to play against.

"Moving on from that, we're looking at the continuity side of the game. But I think the key thing for me is the decision making by individual players, that they take on this responsibility that when they've got the ball that they control the game. When we get 15 players who can do that against New Zealand, that will be a massive step forward."

Overall, Ashton seems content enough at the speed with which the squad are adopting his ideas, and the players are becoming more aware and decisive about attacking gaps and/or linking with support runners.

Ideally, the Irish coach would like more time, "But then again, what coach wouldn't say that?" Ashton also intimated that it would have been preferable had Ireland been able to continue with the original plan of playing Canada first, but as he also added: "What better than to play the All Blacks at the moment? There must be a million rugby players around the world who would give their right arm to do that."