BEST FOOT FORWARD
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RORY BEST has declared himself ready for World Cup lift - off on Saturday despite his reduced playing time during Ireland’s warm-up series.
Joe Schmidt made a point of keeping his most experienced hooker in isolation during the f our warm- up matches, the Ulster skipper featuring in just 86 of the 320 minutes due to the coach’s fear that Best sheds too many pounds in games.
However, following a fleeting August 8 cameo in Wales and t hen an hour- l ong spin at Twickenham four weeks later on September 5, Best says he is raring to go following the lack of activity designed to keep him at his best fighting weight.
‘I’m about 105-and-a-half kilos, so I’m feeling really good,’ said the 33-year- old, poised to lead the charge at No 2 ahead of backup hookers Sean Cronin and Richardt Strauss at his third World Cup.
‘It’s been a really enjoyable preseason. It’s given me a wee bit more time to work on dif-different bits and pieces, and when you get a little bit older and you get to the other side of 30 it’s sometimes nicer in pre-season to have an extra week or two to do weights.’
This time four years ago, Ireland were already in situ in host country New Zealand, arriving in Queenstown f or rest and relaxation before heading to New Plymouth for their opener against USA.
This time round, with England 2015 only a short hop across the Irish Sea, they are spending the earlier part of opening match-week billeted in Carton House’s familiar environs before flying this evening to Cardiff.
It meant they were able to enjoy a farewell barbeque with their families on Sunday in Maynooth before getting down to the serious business that includes getting as acquainted as possible with the new Gilbert World Cup
Minutes action for Rory Best during Ireland’s four World Cup warmup games
match ball.
‘It’s fairly similar [to other balls],’ r e ported Best, whos e lineout throwing will be under scrutiny. ‘ We used it a bit last week, we’ll use it this week — we’re well used to it. We play with the Rhino in PRO12 and Gilbert in Champions Cup. Different teams use different balls. Like, the Six Nations used be a complete lottery, there were three or four different balls.
‘You just get used to it. We have been a little bit better prepared for it because we have had it for a bit now, but this week you have to just try to tell yourself, “It’s just a ball”.’
With Ireland set for a minimum 27 nights together in the UK, comedian Tommy Tiernan, musician Christy Moore, chef Richard Corrigan and sprinter Usain Bolt were with the squad already to ward off potential pre-tournament fatigue in spending too much time in each other’s company before the off.
Those visits helped camaraderie, with Bolt in particular making an indelible impression on Best. ‘To meet someone like that was unbelievable. He’s such an iconic figure in the word of sport.
‘The big thing was that he says when he goes into championships and he feels good, he knows he’s going to perform. It’s not necessarily about how events leading into it have gone. It’s about how he’s feeling himself.
‘From our point of view, we’re feeling pretty good at the minute despite the results over the last two games.
‘The big thing that struck me was just how big he is. Paul [O’Connell] presented him with a shirt and claims he had an inch on him, but I’m not convinced!’
THE START of another World Cup campaign gets the nostalgic juices flowing and it’s a good time to talk about ‘Doyler’, the man who led Ireland to the inaugural tournament in 1987.
Gregarious, volatile, passionate, intense, articulate, infuriating, complex — the descriptions of the late Mick Doyle are many and varied, but ‘dull’ never features among them. Doyle was Irish rugby’s highest profile and most charismatic character through the 1980s and his World Cup story is instructive in framing the upcoming challenge.
After a distinguished playing career as a flanker which brought him Ireland and Lions honours, Doyle made a successful transition to coaching, guiding Leinster to five interprovincial titles between 1979 and 1983.
He had his own way of doing things, once even offering his resignation after Ollie Campbell’s six penalties had seen Munster thumped 18-0.
‘You don’t need me to win playing like that,’ he told branch officials, ‘but if you want to play some rugby, I’m interested.’
Leinster gave him his head and, for the next session at Anglesea Road, Doyle instructed his players to play an hour-long game of tip rugby while he retired to the Old Belvedere bar. The players loved it.
‘We want Doyler for our leader ‘cos he’s big and f*****g fast,’ they would sing down the back of the bus and, while the lyrics lacked subtlety, relevance or indeed any sense of rhyming, they were dripping in affection.
When he got the Ireland job in 1985, Doyle immediately infused the squad with youth and ambition and set about breaking down provincial boundaries. The story is told how, after one of the initial Sunday morning sessions in Lansdowne Road, Doyle called after Ulster prop Jimmy McCoy as the RUC officer (who needed a security detail for trips to Dublin) headed for the showers.
‘Hey, McCoy,’ shouted Doyle, ‘move your fat arse, you’ll be late for Mass.’
McCoy paused, unused to such frivolity amid the sensitivities of The Troubles, before smilingly offering a two-fingered response.
Doyle’s declaration that he was going to abandon Ireland’s traditional forward-driven, kicking game in order to have a cut, elicited a sceptical response.
‘You can’t give an entire nation a brain transplant overnight,’ scoffed England coach Dick Greenwood only for his scorn to be flung back in his face when Ireland’s new-found brio landed the Triple Crown with England vanquished on the final day.
However, by the time the World Cup rolled around, the sheen had been rubbed off Doyle’s tenure. The other nations, caught on the hop in ‘85, had worked out Ireland and the coach had no Plan B.
With the IRFU dragged grudgingly to the World Cup table, believing (correctly) it was an inevitable stride towards professionalism, a talented Ireland group were ruined by farcical preparations including a diktat that they were not allowed to play any competitive club matches i n the build-up.
There was resentment that Doyle did not do more to improve the preparations. However, the coach was experiencing his own stresses — his business interests were floundering and, as well as being on medication, he was, as he admitted subsequently, ‘hitting the bottle too hard’.
After a nightmare two-day journey Down Under in steerage, with Doyle killing the time via the drinks trolley, the coach suffered a heart attack on arrival and, when he resumed control, his direction was fitful, at best.
‘I was picked at No 8,’ recalls Neil Francis — in Tom English’s excellent chronology ‘No Borders: playing rugby for Ireland’ — ‘I went up to Doyler and told him I hadn’t played there since I was 14. I was expecting a masterclass. All he said was: “If the Pope comes around the scrum on a Honda 50... you f*****g nail him.’
Ireland staggered to a quarter-final against co-hosts Australia and were swatted aside, the first in a long run of debilitating World Cup quarter-final defeats, and Doyle was out, replaced by Ulster’s Jimmy Davidson.
The contrast between that 1987 experience and Ireland’s readiness for this World Cup could not be more pronounced. Joe Schmidt is as meticulous as Doyle was unpredictable and, for all the accolades flung in his direction, shies away from the spotlight as assiduously as Doyle courted it.
Nonetheless, bridging 28 years of World Cup failure, there is a bond between the two — their overwhelming commitment to Ireland’s success and a shared love of attacking, innovative rugby
The latter assertion may elicit Dick Greenwood-esque snorts of derision, given the critics lining up to knock Schmidt’s perceived conservatism with Ireland, but the evidence lies in the New Zealander’s mesmerising commitment to expansion during his time with Clermont and Leinster.
Forget the warm-ups, they were a means to an end. Schmidt does not need to show his true hand until the France game on October 11.
And, while Irish optimism is always a precarious indulgence before World Cups, the conviction is growing that we are about to witness something special.
Not quite the ‘give it a lash’ abandon of Doyle’s tumultuous reign but an element of previously sheathed panache to adorn Schmidt’s established structures and propel Ireland further than ever before at rugby’s showpiece gathering.
The spirit of Doyler is hovering enticingly over Ireland’s latest World Cup odyssey... buckle up.