This Ireland squad is going to the tournament at just the right time
LEGEND WOOD IS HAPPY IRISHMEN ARE LATE ARRIVALS
BY DAIRE WALSH
WITH just two days to go until they kick-start their Pool D campaign against Canada, the Irish squad finally departed their Carton House base yesterday.
Although they will be one of the last teams to arrive for the eagerly-anticipated global rugby competition in England Wales, former Ireland skipper Keith Wood doesn’t feel that this makes much of a difference.
Instead, the legendary hooker is more concerned about the tricky environment they will find themselves in during the coming weeks.
He said: “I have been in warm weather training camps where it was 8C and it rained solidly for a week. We’ve trained all over the place, I don’t know if it matters.
“You want to be somewhere where you don’t have excuses. You don’t want the players saying, ‘This is crap, the food’s crap, bed’s crap. I keep losing my laundry’. I know they’re comfortable in Carton House, and I know that’s their home as an Irish rugby team but I also don’t think they’re in the comfort zone there. I don’t think they’re missing anything by not going and doing all these things.”
And 58-times capped Wood believes all this good management will come in handy on Saturday when Ireland face the Canadians at the Millennium Stadium, even though the Maple Leafs are a tier two rugby nation.
The 43-year-old, who played in the 1995, 1999 and 2003 Finals, says this game – as well as the tests against Romania and Italy – will serve as ideal build-up for their final pool fixture with the French.
But, using the troublesome 2007 World Cup as a reference point, he warned they cannot take any side for granted.
Wood said: “My idea going into a World Cup, if you play a team like Canada you know that this is a huge day for them. Absolutely kick them up and down the field. You just have to be brutal in your treatment of them because you need to get the win. Italy, you just can’t take any of these things for granted – not even vaguely – and I think the second you do, you go back to 2007.
“People say the conditioning was wrong then, we were out of kilter, and everything was wrong but we still tried to play a stupid style of rugby.
“We ran the ball wide, off slow ball and they just knocked us over. They set us up as targets, and knocked us over against Georgia and Namibia.
“We were lucky to get out of those games because we played the wrong style.”
Nevertheless, the French game is expected to be the stand-out tie of the pool stages for Ireland.
And having seen first-hand how well they are able to perform in World Cup Finals, Wood is extremely wary of the challenge that will be posed by Phillipe Saint-Andre’s charges.
He added: “I don’t think they’re going to surprise me, they would be one of my outside bets for the tournament. They were all over the shop during the Six Nations absolutely all over the shop in selection, game plan, in attitude, in everything.
“Yet, everything has changed for them over the last 10 years, they just see the World Cup as being their thing.
“They have the capacity of beating New Zealand, more than any other team. They frighten the life out of them.
“And that frightens the life out of me. If we get a French team that’s that focused and is actually able to play against us it becomes hard for us.”
Despite fancying the French to upset the form book, Wood believes the winners will gain come from the Southern Hemisphere – but this time it will be Australia’s turn.
He said: “New Zealand always get a little bit nervous away from home. Of course, that’s a little rich coming from an Irishman – we haven’t won anything at all! I just think Australia peak at the right time, they’re fully focused every time there is a World Cup and just seem to get it right.”