Joe Schmidt and his coaching staff don’t make it easy on the newbies.
Tiernan O’Halloran was delighted with his impact on Ireland’s summer tour to America and Japan. When he arrived up at Carton House for a short training camp, last weekend, he knew he had to start from scratch again.
There was work to do.
The Connacht fullback had some company for the camp in the form of Kieran Marmion, Ultan Dillane, Finlay Bealham and Dave Heffernan. There was also Bundee Aki there in his IRFU-emblazoned gear. You can’t miss that lad.
Their first time in green!! https://t.co/aUd0047NgM
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) August 21, 2017
The 27-year-old Kiwi will be Irish qualified by the time the November Series rolls around and Schmidt brought him in to get him up to speed just in case he is required for his Test debut, and then some.
At the launch of the Guinness PRO14 launch at the Aviva Stadium, O’Halloran offered an insight to life in the Irish camp. O’Halloran and Aki are getting their heads around new calls, tactics and plays under Kieran Keane at Connacht. The couple of days in Ireland camp saw their homework stack up.
Aki is known as a quite sociable character but he would have been forgiven for following O’Halloran’s lead. He said:
“It was good to get all the squad back together with a few of those lads that were away with the Lions. Bundee did good; he fitted in well. It was his first camp and he did well. It’s tough now.
“I remember when I was coming into camp for the first time. For the first four days I was locking myself into my room to learn all the plays and the calls because there was so much detail to learn straight away. And for Joe, you literally need to learn that within 24 hours.
“It was just trying to learn all the new calls… I was okay as I was used to many of them but we’ve all our new plays at Connacht now as well as Ireland. So Bundee has double the work that I do. But he coped with himself very well and did good in training.”
Aki is only easing himself back to full fitness so he did not feature in every play, or rep, at Carton House but he did enough to get many that featured enthused about what he could bring to Test rugby.
O’Halloran’s eyes lit up when he spoke about his time with the Irish squad.
“I love being involved up there. Any time I get any involvement in the squad, it’s brilliant. Training and playing with the older guys up there and the intensity is higher. How Joe goes about everything is very intense. You always have to be pretty switched on.”
He added, “It’s a higher level than at provincial and it’s up to us Connacht guys, whether it is five or six of us that’s up, to bring that back to Connacht and raise everybody else’s standards.”
From the odd player in Ireland squads to regularly have five or six heading off to Kildare to train under Schmidt & Co. Along with the 2015/16 PRO12 title, that must be the greatest success in the province’s 22 years in the professional game.
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