Andrew Trimble once revealed that he always loved listening to Paul O’Connell during the week of an Ireland-England game, how O’Connell invariably had something special to say and it always had the desired effect.
“He never lets you down during an England week,” said Trimble. “He’s massively motivated and that inspiration filtered through. Everybody was unbelievably up for it.”
It’s doubtful that O’Connell, in his guise as Ireland’s forwards coach, reinvokes the “manic aggression” he called for before Ireland hosted England at Croke Park in 2007 with a performance which Andy Farrell subsequently described as “certainly a highlight in my career, even though I was on the wrong side of it”.
One imagines O’Connell is m …
- March 4, 2022
