Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
BURNING AMBITION
Kearney insists just one little spark can reignite a fire in Ireland’s belly
ROB KEARNEY claims that a small spark against France can restart a raging fire in Ireland again.
It’s been a slow burn so far for Joe Schmidt’s men in this year’s Six Nations championship, despite winning the last two games and still being in with a chance of defending the title won 12 months ago.
Schmidt recently spoke of how the team were “a bit broken” by an opening day defeat to England.
But veteran Kearney explained how a team can go from being world-beaters in November – as Ireland were against the All Blacks – to showing fragility against Italy a few short months later.
“Elite athletes are no different to any other punter watching on from the stand,” the Ireland full-back said.
“It’s still a human person with the same thoughts, the same negative thoughts, the same positive thoughts.
“We’re all the same. You put a guy out on the field in front of 80,000 people, another few million people watching at home on TV, and you make a mistake. It will have that effect on anybody.
“And that’s where our training comes in, our confidence, little bit of sports psychology and mindfulness – the little things that we do in the background to give us that ability to park it, move to the next moment and keep looking forward.
“Sport is very, very psychological. Sometimes in those games – particularly the Italian game – with a lot of the mistakes we kind of went into our shell and showed our anxiety a little bit. It’s all psychological.” The flip side, argued Kearney, is that confidence rapidly lost can also quickly be rediscovered.
As he expects unchanged France to produce their best performance yet in this championship, Ireland could do with that transformation on Sunday.
The 32-year-old added: “A team’s confidence can come back in one set piece, three or four phases of play.
“If passing is really accurate, you find the holes or the gaps that you scouted during the week, people running on to the ball at pace and you score a try at the end of it.
“The great thing about a team lacking a little bit of confidence is that it just takes a small spark to get it back. That is what we will be hoping for early on at the weekend.”
Kearney pointed to Schmidt’s innate understanding of the squad and whether players need to be worked harder or have the “reins pulled in”.
“We probably were a little bit broken after the English game but that’s understandable,” Kearney added. “But we’ve got to move on in this competition too. That game was round one and we’re moving into round four now. It’s time we put it past us.
“Deep down we all realise that sometimes it’s quite easy to get immersed into this little rut that you can be in. You start to listen a bit to outside pressures, a little bit of noise and everything that goes on.
“The coaches have been good at reassuring us about the team we are and what we’ve achieved over the last 12 months.”