Pre Match Quotes: Eddie O’Sullivan

Ireland coach Eddie O’Sullivan is unhappy with the way preparations for the second test have been discrupted by a lack of access to the stadium.

– On Pre-Match Preparations –

I’m happy with the players yes, but with the preparations – No. We were informed at 4:30 yesterday that we would not have access to the stadium for Captain’s Run.  It is not just that we run around the pitch but our medical people need to check the facilities, our media person checks where players will be taken for interviews and our kickers get their lines for the post and the players have a run out.

There is a soccer match there so we cannot have access and they must have known about it before now. At this level it is unheard of.

We eventually got our Medical team in there to have a look around but the team will have no sight of the pitch before match day.

I don’t even know what the dressing room is like. If we had been alerted to this earlier we could have gone in during the week and done what we needed.

It contravenes IRB regulations if you want to be picky about it but it really disadvantages our kickers.

I don’t want to judge but it is hard to know how it happened. They must have known there would be a soccer match there.

– On the pitch –

I hear it is a very tight pitch, a very good surface but very tight, but we can’t tell until the day of the game.  Jeremy will get some kicking in just  before the game but the situation has disrupted our preparations.

– On the relationship with Argentina –

We are not their favourite country to host it seems. Their journalists are reporting that there were 70 incidents of foul play that the referee missed. That is asinine in my view. We were all at the game, we saw what happened.

We all try and use our home advantage but we do it within the regulations. There is nothing wrong with getting the support fired up but some of this stuff is off the wall.

We have taken a fair bit of flak for “cheap shots” and the like but we are not the villains all the time, there are always two sides to the story.

I don’t want to get sucked into it, I’m not throwing the teddy out of the pram but this does need to be recorded.

– On Ireland’s physicality and discipline –

I think they were a little bit surprised last week in the physical stakes, they got as good as they gave out. Tomorrow they may try to redress that but the guys going out tomorrow are in the same frame of mind as the lads last week.

The discipline last week was more about technicalities than foul play. We had two incidents – Bryan Young was penalised and Neil Best was yellow carded.

The penalties I was really unhappy with was the silly stuff, coming offside at rucks, pulling down the jumper. There was twelve of those in the game and we only lost by two points.

I thought the referee did a good job considering he wasn’t wired to his touch judges, I thought he was a bit harsh on Trevor Hogan once. I would criticize us for not being smarter.

I hope we will be more accurate in our backline on Saturday. If we get the same as we got up front last week plus more accuracy and better discipline we will be fine.

– On Felipe Contepomi –

I think he (Todeschini) will bring something different tomorrow. They seem to rate him as their number one number 10 ahead of Contepomi but I do think Felipe is an exceptionally good player. I said last week he was their most dangerous player and he would be the difference and unfortunately I was proved right.