For the first time since Declan Kidney was Ireland's head coach for the 2013 Six Nations, Wednesday's launch featured an Irish coach in the shape of Conor O'Shea, now facing into his first Six Nations as coach of Italy.
“I think back to the ’70s and ’80s, and sitting at home on Saturdays spending the whole day watching the Five Nations, and then you’re fortunate enough to play in it and then to have the honour of coaching Italy and trying to hopefully lead some change within the whole movement of a very special country.
“Now for the first time I’ve experienced just how proud and passionate these people are, and hopefully we can give them something over the next few weeks that will show we’re on the right path.”
Although buoyed by their historic November win over South Africa, followed a week later by their sobering defeat at home to Tonga, the Azzurri have won one match in the last three Six Nations championships.
“We can’t fool you. We can’t fool supporters. We’re obviously a team that is striving to work in the right way, and if we do that then results will look after themselves. So I’m going to be very boring. I’m going to talk performance, performance, performance, and hopefully we’ll be very much about performance, performance because we can’t look at results, and we’re just looking at making sure our short-, medium- and long-term goals are met.
Competitive
“In the short-term, that we become more competitive, and in the medium-term that we arrive at that World Cup with an unbelievably difficult group of players to play against. I lost to Argentina in 1999, and hopefully we can do something similar in our pool; and then in the long-term we’ve set up systems and structures, and changed some of the pathways, and made very necessary changes.”
Italy begin at home to Wales, with a first encounter against his native Ireland in Rome six days later.
“Could I lie and say I haven’t thought about it? Ah, it will be special. I think lots of family and lots of friends, but like Joe [Schmidt] would have when he would play New Zealand, my country will always be Ireland, my home will always be Ireland, but my responsibility and my job lies with Italy, and we’ll try and prepare, and make sure that we put out a side and put in a performance that, six days after Wales, will make us proud.
“But first and foremost, we want to make sure that we focus absolutely 100 per cent on Wales, because the last couple of Six Nations games against them have been difficult. So we want to make sure we gain their respect back, and start to earn their respect back, and show that we’re moving in the right direction. We’ll look at Ireland then.”
Dylan Hartley, whose six-week ban for that head shot on Seán O'Brien in the December Champions Cup meeting between Northampton and Leinster conveniently ended in time for Wednesday's launch, nonetheless had to field relentless questioning about his discipline, fitness and so forth.
“You guys have a job to do, I have a job to do,” he acknowledged. “My job is to keep my tackles to an acceptable height. It is noise, I try not to read too much of it, but I realise it’s there.”
Tackle technique
To that end, he said he had been working with the England defensive coach Paul Gustard in order to rectify his tackle technique. “It’s something I need to clean up and I’ve put myself in a good place to do that.”
This was not an issue of temperament, Hartley maintained. “It’s a technical issue for me.”
France come into their second campaign under Guy Noves buoyed by a promising November as they seek to arrest a run of five Championships in which they have finished in the bottom half.
They must start against the reigning Grand Slam champions England, and les rosbifs have become something of a bogey side for les bleus.
“I don’t know [if it’s good or not] but we have to start with something. Last year we started with Italy and they nearly beat us, so this year it’s England. I have huge respect for all the other teams. This year it’s England so we know it’s going to be a huge match and we’ll try to make it a huge match.”
Asked what his favourite Six Nations fixture is, Noves said that what pleased him most was to see his players happy. “For example, when winning against Ireland in Paris last year. Ireland deserved to win that match as much as we did, but to see the French team stay in the fight and win, and to hear the French crowd supporting them until the end, that really motivated me.”
