RUGBY:IN CONTRAST to the relatively relaxed and forthcoming Martin Johnson as he contemplated the challenge of winning a Grand Slam, his counterpart, Declan Kidney is practically blue in the face repeating the same old mantra.

As to whether this game can, finally constitute a turning point of sorts for Ireland, he said that topic of debate could wait until after the full-time whistle.

“We just have to knuckle down and play the best game we can, try to get that consistent 80-minute performance. I believe once we do that, the belief within the players, there will be a lot of pennies dropping saying ‘Jeez, we can do that’. They know they can do it, it’s just a case of going out and doing it now.”

In other words therefore, it could be a turning point except that, by rights, he could have been talking about any of the previous matches – just change the date and the opposition. But the difference now, of course, is that after today there really will be no more tomorrows.

So, turning point or not, it is a point of no return. “Well, we are not going to win a championship, we are not going to win a Triple Crown,” said Brian O’Driscoll. “It’s a chance to beat a top-class team and put out a performance we feel we still have in us.”

Underlining his comments of midweek, O’Driscoll said that denying England a slam was secondary to not drawing a blank at home in the championship for the first time since the last year of the old Five Nations, in 1999. “We have big motivation in that we lost our only game we’ve had at home in this championship to France, so we don’t want to lose two from two. And if anyone needs any added impetus to their performance, that will rank up there. It certainly will for me.”

You’d have thought, too, that finally delivering something close to the kind of 80-minute performance this team has in them for the first time adds to the pressure. “No more pressure than we put on ourselves in game one,” maintained O’Driscoll.

“Granted it mightn’t quite have happened for us and we’re running out of games. But I think we feel because of the hard work that goes in, if you keep working as hard as we have done and it hasn’t happened then it eventually will happen. We’ve been good for 30-40-50 minutes of games but not that full 80. So if we keep working hard and talking about the things we need to get right, eventually it will happen. I really genuinely feel that performance is in us and waiting to come out.”