Despite a rare and savoured Thomond victory, Gordon D'Arcy tells GERRY THORNLEYthat Leinster must improve by 10 to 20 per cent for next week's Heineken Cup clash
GORDON D’ARCY had plenty to savour after sampling a rare win at Thomond Park.
Given scope to run at a congested midfield, there were plenty of flashes of the footwork and strength in contact that have enabled him to punch above his weight for the last decade and more after a difficult Six Nations.
He attributed the win to a slight increase in accuracy at the breakdown where, he revealed, the referees had been given a new IRB directive that was relayed to the players earlier in the week.
“We’ve been told that sealing off, and players with their head below their hips, is not going to be allowed because it stops competing at the breakdown.
“So there is going to be a transitional thing. Referees have been told about it and teams are going to take two or three games (to adapt) as whenever referees are told to focus on something.”
“Watching the Super 15 this morning, the Sharks and the Waratahs, [it was] the same thing. A couple of guys who were below the shoulders . . . the referees pinged them even though they had won clean ball.
“It’s just something that we have to get used to and the teams that adjust to it quicker are the ones that will do better. There’s no point in whinging about it. It’s going to happen so the quicker you adapt to it the better,” he said.
Refreshed by a week’s respite and a return to his province, D’Arcy showed clear signs that he had been enjoying himself on Saturday.
“We were very focused on attacking this week because we’ve come here before and attacked for 40 minutes and then, not sat back, but lost the momentum and we all know the result. So we were very, very attack-minded this week, and that suits me,” he said with a big smile.
Looking ahead to next Saturday’s quarter-final against Cardiff Blues at the Aviva, D’Arcy noted that a phase midway through the second half was “as quick and as tough a phase of play as you’re going to get, and for both teams it’s the ideal preparation.
“But whatever we did was the baseline, and we have to go up 10/15/20 per cent. The Heineken Cup is that bridging gap between Pro12 and internationals and whatever was good enough to win at Thomond Park today, and that was a momentous effort by 23 players, that won’t be good enough to win next week. A bit of fine detail and the ruck again will make the difference now.”
For Munster though, the improvement will have to be considerably more, and they know it, although they can take some solace in knowing their own pedigree.
“All the lads know what we need to do for next week,” said Simon Zebo after emerging from what had been a very quiet home dressingroom. “We’ve just got to go back to the drawing board on Monday and Tuesday, and see what we did wrong and what we did right.
“Once the analysis is done we need to be positive. These kind of games have happened before in our past and we’ve bounced back from them and we’ll be looking to do the same next week.”
Zebo maintained his first Leinster-Munster had been “a great experience. The intensity and the pace off the game – off the ball stuff as well – was unreal. All the little things, the pressure was very high and that’s where you want to play.
“We came off on the wrong side of the result but we go into another big game next week and that’s something to look forward to.
“Irish derbies are what you look forward to and next week is going to be a huge game, even bigger. So we need to sort out what went wrong and bounce back.”
