He may seem part of the furniture already, but Saturday was the first time Tommy O’Brien played at the Aviva for Ireland.
The Leinster winger won the player of the match after his second-half try during Ireland’s second-half demolition of the Brave Blossoms. O’Brien was also a huge part of Ireland remaining in the lead during a turgid first half, winning multiple jackal penalties and also playing on both wings during Jacob Stockdale’s sin bin.
However, more importantly for him and the team, O’Brien saw way more of the ball on Saturday and speaking afterwards, he said that the team was happy that they were able to get the ball out wide more after last week’s disappointment in Chicago.
Tommy O’Brien of Ireland evades the tackle of Charlie Lawrence, left, and Kippei Ishida. Photo by Seb Daly/Sportsfile
‘That was definitely the thing we talked about afterwards in the review, the most frustrating thing of it was we felt like we didn’t fire any shots, didn’t give an account to ourselves, because we know what we’re capable of and what we can do. So we just said in the review afterwards that we couldn’t do the same thing again,’
And while he wasn’t given many opportunities against the All Blacks, in his now four caps, the former Ireland U20s captain has taken to International rugby like a duck to water. It would be easy to say that going from playing URC to tests against the All Blacks is a huge jump, but not for O’Brien.
‘I wouldn’t say I found it harder. Like, I guess when you’re in here, you’re just like, it’s another rugby game, you’ve been doing it your whole life. That’s what I’m telling myself before I go out, “It’s just another game of rugby.” Obviously, you want to be able to feed off the crowd and the magnitude of everything to allow yourself to go to another level in terms of finding stuff within you physically that you didn’t realise you had and using the crowd in that capacity. But in terms of weighing on your nerves, I actually have been okay, thankfully.’
Tommy O’Brien of Ireland on his way to scoring his side’s sixth try. Photo by Shauna Clinton/Sportsfile
Andy Farrell spoke candidly about needing to be better, and Ireland are not registering in attack. There does seem to be a shift from the pure multi-phase style, with Crowley putting boot to ball more often, and O’Brien said that the frustration offensively is felt among the squad too as well as the crowd.
‘Yeah, it’s like it’s annoying because during the week we see it clicking in training, so we know we have it in us.
‘And we talked about wanting to kind of play a bit more expansive and inspire the nation to get behind us. Obviously, disappointing last week, but we talked about 2021 when we played Japan. That was like a really brilliant performance, and that was almost the start of that run to the World Cup, where the nation was right behind us. They got really excited about us. So we wanted to try kickstart and do something similar here.’