RUGBY FEATURE: GERRY THORNLEYfinds that as transitional periods go this one has a good mix of new energy and experience

AT FIRST glance Ireland appear to be a hugely experienced team. In point of fact though, they have fielded more Test-hardened teams in the past, whereas in this Six Nations there’s been a blend of vastly experienced campaigners along with younger tyros. It is, perhaps, the kind of blend most coaches would ideally like to have.

Three of the players who started against England last Saturday – Brian O’Driscoll, Ronan O’Gara and John Hayes – have now played 90 Tests or more in what looks like a foot race to become the first Irish player to reach a century of caps, while a further four have a half-century to their name. Yet at the other end of the spectrum, a half-dozen of the starting line-up at Croke Park a week ago had 15 caps or less to their name.

This gradual restructuring of the team is nothing like on the scale of the game against Scotland in 2000, when Warren Gatland made eight changes from the team beaten a fortnight before by 50-18 in Twickenham, including five new caps. Even so, there’s probably never been such an infusion of relatively new players since then, albeit over a more protracted period of time.

Jamie Heaslip and Rob Kearney, along with another to miss out on the World Cup, Tommy Bowe, established themselves in the starting team in last season’s Six Nations. Luke Fitzgerald and Paddy Wallace did so on the summer tour, and Stephen Ferris and Tomas O’Leary have followed this season.

It has helped to freshen up the squad and brought the kind of youthful enthusiasm which has also helped to re-energise the more established core who have been in the side for much of the last decade.

In the build-up to last week’s game one English writer speculated as to whether this might have been the most experienced Irish side ever. But the team that kicked off against England had 610 caps, which was less than the starting XV at Croke Park two years ago, which went into that game with 720 caps to their names.

Thereafter they became known as The Untouchables, with Eddie O’Sullivan absolving them from the summer tour to Argentina and pencilling them in as his first choice XV for the World Cup. Injuries permitted them to play together just once at the World Cup, against Georgia, in what was assuredly the most experienced Irish team ever to take to a rugby pitch.

With eight half-centurions in their ranks, that starting line-up had 795 caps to their names, thus averaging 53 caps per man. What’s more, including the bench, the 22 on duty that balmy evening at the Stade Chaban-Delmas in Bordeaux boasted an incredible 1,003 caps between them.

With Peter Stringer and Denis Hickie missing out against France, not to mention Geordan Murphy off the bench, there’s never been such an experienced Irish starting XV or match-day 22 since. Rory Best was the most inexperienced player in Ireland’s starting line-up against Georgia with 15 caps, in contrast to the half dozen who had to surpass that number in last weekend’s line-up.

As Brian O’Driscoll points out, transitional periods are inevitable, this one beginning last season under O’Sullivan, though he notices one difference from when he and other young players broke into the Irish team around the turn of the millennium. “It’s great from our point of view in that the boys aren’t afraid to voice their opinions. Maybe I was a little backward in coming forward in my first year or two about saying what way I felt some things should be done. Lukey and Kearns, even though they’re young guys and they’ve only a number of caps, they’ve still been playing professional rugby for three and four years each and that gives you confidence.

“They see that everyone’s at a level playing field and everyone’s entitled to their opinion and there’s no reason why a 21-year-old or 22-year-old can’t have as good an idea as a 30-year-old. You have to work that into your planning strategy and I think that’s benefited us to a degree.”

While all bar O’Leary had been capped before the last World Cup, only Wallace and Ferris were actually in the 30-man squad that went to France, although clearly the unused Ferris wasn’t right then.

Ferris, Kearney and Fitzgerald were exceptional talents from an early age and their swift rise in the professional ranks has not been surprising. So were Heaslip and O’Leary, team-mates on the Irish team that made the 2004 Under-21 World Cup final, but their path was initially blocked by a host of backrowers and Peter Stringer, while the talented Wallace has been around the scene the longest.

He first come into an Irish squad in 2002 and he was taken to the 2003 World Cup, before finally making his overdue debut with a two-minute cameo at the end of the November 2006 win over South Africa, then scoring 26 points on his full debut against the Pacific Islands, but thereafter he was confined to bit parts, save for the first Test in Argentina and the World Cup warm-up match away to Scotland.

Despite being on the bench as back-up throughout the 2007 and 2008 Six Nations, as well as the World Cup, in those 14 games Wallace made just four appearances, never earlier than the 77th minute. Speicalising as a centre at Ulster, while bulking up and improving his defence, has revived his Test career. He was permed with O’Driscoll by Michael Bradley in last summer’s Tests against New Zealand and Australia and back on the bench last November, Wallace has been the only player to break into the XV that played against Argentina, reviving the midfield partnership that worked well in Wellington and Melbourne. The ensuing reshuffle has seen Fitzgerald revert to the wing and Kearney to full-back.

Of course, the flip side of all this is that some players have had to miss out and for Girvan Dempsey, Shane Horgan and now Malcolm O’Kelly, if less so for the retired Denis Hickie and Simon Easterby, watching on from the outside must be hard to take.

It must even be a little strange in moments for O’Gara and O’Driscoll when they look around and see that they’re the only ones left of a backline that seemed to be cast in stone for years. “It is and it isn’t,” says O’Driscoll. “I’ve played in teams before that have had other pals who’ve retired; maybe not as tight a [friendship] as someone like ‘Den’ or ‘Shaggy’ is far from finished yet. It’s strange but you realise you have to get on with things and we’re about being a team together. We’re not all going to be Billy Bestmates, a lot of us are colleagues, but you’ve to try and build something too because you’re going to fight for someone who you are close to than a stranger. I think we’re in the process of trying to develop that and hopefully it’s going the right way.”

Dempsey, Horgan and O’Kelly have at least been part of the expanded Irish squad this season, as Declan Kidney and his management team have aimed to keep everyone feeling involved, while Peter Stringer, Geordan Murphy, Gordon D’Arcy, Denis Leamy and, until recently, O’Kelly, have all been on the replacements’ bench.

Indeed the seven replacements who all had some game time against Italy in Rome assuredly constituted the most experienced bench Ireland have ever assembled, given they had 336 caps between them.

“I really think that it’s great to have some experience coming off the bench,” says O’Driscoll, “and guys who have been in that environment before and been there and done it, and know when they have to come on what their job entails. That definitely does benefit you. You even saw it last weekend when Leams came on and he was the one that made that big tackle at the end on Tom Croft.

“Some times little things like that go unnoticed by people but not by your team-mates. Like, I didn’t know at the time who it was, but I went back and looked over it and saw who it was. It was a great shot that he threw in and that’s what you expect from Denis.”

Having such heavyweight players on the bench also keeps the pressure on the incumbents to perform, as the captain also observes. “Obviously Rory’s been involved in the tightest call on the whole pitch at the minute – between him and Fla [Jerry Flannery]. Both of them are playing really well and to come on and do a great job continues to ask the question and that brings the best out in Fla as well, and that’s what you need across the squad.”

Indeed Flannery has been Ireland’s second highest ball-carrier in the Six Nations to date, behindPaul O’Connell.

Jettisoning experienced players altogether has arguably been one of the mistakes which the All Blacks have made at the last two World Cups. John Mitchell’s rebuilt All Blacks played a fabulous brand of rugby throughout 2003 but when it came to the World Cup it seemed a tad hasty and ill-advised not to have the likes of Andrew Mehrtens and Christian Cullen involved in the set-up. And when Justin Marshall went off injured in that fateful semi-final against Australia, they looked callow and decidedly short of leaders.

Curiously, for all Graham Henry’s attention to detail and expressed determination not to repeat any of the mistakes in 2003 when building a 30-man squad for 2007 with his much-debated “rotation” selection policy, in their fateful quarter-final against France in Cardiff the likes of Doug Howlett and Aaron Mauger were left sitting in the stand.

When Dan Carter went off injured and the All Blacks gradually lost their nerve under pressure in reverting to a pick-and-go game which they had never employed in the previous four years, it looked like déjà vu. But then those who ignore the mistakes of history are apt to repeat them.

The presence of proven campaigners amongst the replacements can only add an extra edge to those starting. For example, having Leamy breathing down their necks has also assuredly contributed to Ferris and Heaslip playing so well.

O’Connell and O’Driscoll remain the standard bearers, but Ferris is Ireland’s second highest Irish tackler [behind O’Driscoll] in the championship to date with 24, just ahead of the excellent Fitzgerald, whose footwork, vision and tackling technique have, unsurprsingly, seen him step up seamlessly into Test rugby.

Ferris plays and even looks a little like a Springbok backrower and he would appear to be tailormade for this summer’s tour. And if Ferris looks a good bet for the Lions, Fitzgerald, Bowe and Kearney are emerging as contenders too, as is Heaslip.

Yet none of the latter four even went to the World Cup. Times have changed for Team Ireland, subtly but significantly.