Brian O’Driscoll speaks on Ireland’s next fixture against Italy
Speaking to a media channel today, Brian O’Driscoll revealed Ireland’s fears regarding Italy’s fixture. The juice factor of what he said was that it would be unpractical to think that Italy can’t beat Ireland. He believes, if not in the coming fixture, but
at any stage of this tournament Italy will do the damage.
However, O’Driscoll is indomitable to beckon the performance Ireland needs to push back the trouble by Italy that he believes is unavoidable. The all time RBS Six Nations rivals will face each other on Saturday at Stadio Flaminio. And Ireland has never lost
a match to them since Italy has stepped into the Six Nations tournament that is year 2000.
O’Driscoll admitted, “They've definitely improved from my initial memories. In recent times teams give them the same admiration as they did back then, but it's a different type of respect.”
It has been proved in 2010 that if a team has taken Italy for granted and doesn’t put much effort till the last quarter of the game, then Italy will turn the game over them. It’s a surprise element that Italy possesses and when the opponent is least expecting,
the Italian forwards run over like lions. Against Italy the opponent can never have the upper hand the entire game.
O’Driscoll elaborated the above observation as, “If you were ahead of them by then you could pull away in that section of the game, but that definitely hasn't been the case in the last couple of years. They've managed to stay with teams an awful lot longer.”
These statements and observations suggest that the Irish side has done their homework and have studied the Italian strategies quite closely. O’Driscoll told that Italian players are no more only physical, but play around with the ball a lot and have grabbed
the essence of rugby. Last quarter of previous decade has revealed that they can even put Australia under difficulty every now and then.
Anyhow, Ireland is still the favourite to win the fixture in Rome and disappoint the critics who believe Ireland can’t play with a dozen players missing. Twelve international players for Ireland have been sidelined due to injury.
Considering the amount of experience, Ireland is still able to give an average of 35 caps per player. Whereas, Italy has selected a salt-and-pepper squad which has majority of veterans, including prop Martin Castrogiovanni and the captain Sergio Parisse.
O’Driscoll commented about the upcoming fixture and the stadium, “The Stadio Flaminio is not as big as a lot of other international stadia, but it's a nice place to play. The sun shines and it's a hard track. More often than not teams love playing in those
conditions.”
Right now both the teams are going through the hardest part of the rugby and that is the buildup, because once you get into it things start coming to you by themselves and are much easier to tackle. The critics, the media hype, expectations, comments, anticipation
always put the teams under pressure and stress.
Ireland has so far shown positive signs, whereas Italy has also geared up with their last year’s average performance.
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