In shorts and T-shirt in the Tea Room at The Campus in Quinta do Lago, Paul O’Connell seems satisfied the warm weather training was the right call. Modesty prevents him from claiming that travelling to the Algarve this week has been the best decision Irish rugby has ever made.
Ireland have been coming to the warmth of Portugal since 2019 and as Storm Éowyn rips across the country, the squad, who arrived on Wednesday, are hunkered in a group on the outside pitch maybe wondering what preparation for England next weekend might have looked like had they been in Dublin. Certainly not padel and golf.
A staple diet of Irish conversation, the weather this week in the resort was warm with scattered sunshine. England have also decamped from their Surrey bolt hole in Bagshot to Girona for temperatures in the high teens.
Who will win the Leinster Schools Rugby Senior Cup?
“We have a TV screen outside there,” says O’Connell offering an image of pleasant January warmth. “It’s a different type of meeting, you can watch a bit of footage, have a chat, watch some footage. It works really well for us. I suppose there’s a bit of a feeling of ‘we’re in with Ireland now.’ We’re out of the country and there’s this special experience.
“It’s good for the players. Players play a lot of tough training weeks, this time of year. You’re generally heading into bad weather, so to come over here for a week feels different for the players and it allows the reconnect.”
The design is to make the tough physical work less painful with players in no doubt of how England in game one of the Six Nations Championship inflates its importance. Even in Ireland camp where the default view is always “it’s just another rugby match,” they understand that the perception of Irish fans is that it is always more than that.
England won the meeting last year 23-22 in Twickenham, when Marcus Smith dropped a goal in the 81st minute and although Ireland retained the championship, there was a feeling that the Grand Slam was within reach. England are always a more complex challenge than an annual Six Nations clash and O’Connell is unequivocal about their strengths.
“Listen they are an excellent side. They’ve an incredible X-factor. They’ve incredible athletes,” he says. “They’ve good set piece, they have a good kicking game, excellent defensively. I think they have been very good, very, very hard to play against, very good at the break down. They play a kind of pressure style of rugby and nothing is ever easy against England.
“Plenty of times in my career England have been really dominant and sometimes when they have been on the back foot a little bit, it is always probably the most physical game you’ll play in the year, so you know I’m not sure what they will change from the autumn but there was a pretty consistent style around their kicking game, a pretty consistent style around their set piece and they seem to work incredibly hard for each other as well.”
Part of the brief in Portugal is also to iron out wrinkles and with the Autumn Nations Series still relatively fresh, the Irish lineouts, the slow starts in games and – reaching back to the tour to South Africa last summer – the ruck are areas that need attention. From the coach’s position they are less crises and more duty of care considerations.
“The lineout wouldn’t have been as good as we’d have liked it to be and there are some easy fixes for that and then there’s a few more complicated ones on top of that,” says O’Connell. “We don’t want to shy away from layering things on to our lineout to go forward, which we did in the autumn and are going to continue to do.
“We probably turned over more ball in the autumn than we have in a long time and it’s probably a big strength of ours. So, I think they are two important facets of our game that need a little bit of attention and a little bit of care.
“How we start a campaign and how we start a game is important. We would have discussed that a little bit and what we’ve done in the past to get that right, that we get that right again.”
O’Connell has met Felix Jones but did not ask him to run through the England playbook. The former Irish back and South African defence consultant under Rassie Erasmus won two World Cups with the Springboks before moving to England as an assistant coach under Steve Borthwick.
Jones’ stay there was shorter lived than expected and he resigned last August before moving back to Dublin.
“Felix is very honourable in that way,” says O’Connell. “I’ve spoken to him, and hoping he’d volunteer something to me, but I haven’t asked him and I didn’t want to put him in a difficult position.
“I know he’s left [England] and what ever happened, happened. He wouldn’t be sharing the playbook or anything, so the brief was for chats. I think Goodie [Andrew Goodman] has spoken to him more. Both their kids play together down at Seapoint.”
A squad day off beckons soon and possibly a stint in The Cheeky Pup. Refining plays and reconnecting, a relaxed Ireland are beginning to wind up.
