Stellar figures have squad ready to go extra mile

Steeling the resolve: Teams, much like Olympic athletes, are primed to peak every four years and accordingly inspiration is sought from everywhere.

When it came to eve-of-journey motivational talks this week, Eddie O'Sullivan showed he was capable of some left-field thinking when bringing in not former denizens of the world's rugby fields but one-time middleweight champion of the world Marvin Hagler and famed explorer Ranulph Fiennes.

In what the IRFU press officer, John Redmond, described as "a varied week with lots of interesting developments", it transpired that - the squad having come together on Sunday evening - Monday was a standard day of training with some weight work in the afternoon before a 75-minute talk, complete with slides, from Fiennes, who has made 22 expeditions to the north and south poles and has been simply described by the Guinness Book Of Records as "the world's greatest explorer".

"He's somebody I've admired for years as one of the great Antarctic explorers," admitted O'Sullivan, "and he had a huge impact on the team."

On Tuesday the squad travelled to Carlow for training followed by a round of golf, courtesy of 0₂, at Mount Juliet, and after another day's training on Wednesday, BBC boxing and rugby commentator Jim Neilly came into the team room.

Quizzical looks then gave way to stunned silence as Marvelous Marvin Hagler, for seven years the undisputed middleweight champion of the world, was introduced by Neilly. You could, apparently, have knocked the players over with a feather duster, never mind a Hagler left hook, not least his biggest fan in the squad, Kevin Maggs.

"We wanted people to speak to the squad who had been at the top of their profession," explained O'Sullivan, "and not necessarily from rugby or even sport, but (people) who had gone through difficult situations as in Fiennes crossing the Antarctic unassisted, how he made hard decisions and how he worked his way through that.

"Hagler, obviously, had basically been to war, and rugby is getting closer and closer to that. It's incredibly physical and very gladiatorial, so again listening to Hagler talking about his preparation and his mental approach, you'd like to think that those gems of experience would rub off on our boys. He certainly had them in the palm of his hand."

With Neilly the conduit, manager Brian O'Brien had worked on bringing Hagler over and the fearsome bald south paw, who fought in the golden era of middleweights along with Sugar Ray Leonard, Tommy Hearns and Roberto Duran, and for a time was considered the best fighter in the world, pound for pound, spoke for an hour and a half before signing autographs.

The danger, O'Sullivan admitted, was that Hagler had them too stoked up.

"Funnily enough today's training was very physical for some reason," admitted O'Sullivan, "to the point where I had to take something off it and ask them to calm down a bit. Briano wanted to take him (Hagler) to the training session but there could have been more casualties if he had shown up."

"He was one of the great world champions," ventured O'Brien, "and I'd say he lost his world championship through a refereeing decision (against Leonard) probably.

"So he's seen both sides of it. He's come from a very hard background. He learned the hard way and he certainly came out on top."