Paul O’Connell was watching TV, last night, with a huge grin.
The Irish captain cannot get enough of World Cup rugby, despite eating, sleeping and drinking it every day since his team assembled for camp in July.
The 35-year-old tuned into the All Blacks’ Pool C encounter with Georgia and was delighted to see the Lelos sticking it to them for 80 minutes.
The world champions eventually won out 43-10 but they will be far from pleased with the stuttering nature of their performance.
At Ireland’s Captain’s Run, this afternoon, O’Connell remarked, “I felt better about our performance in 2007 against Georgia after watching the first half!”
Ireland trailed Georgia 10-7 at the 2007 World Cup and needed a Girvan Dempsey try and a questionable TMO decision to go in their favour to fall over the line, 14-10.
O’Connell continued, “I think defence seems to be a big thing for a lot of teams, all the emerging teams.
“Everyone can defend really well now and put teams under pressure and force mistakes from them. You look at the line-speed and some of the really good decision making that Georgia has in defence.
“I know that some of the errors that the All Blacks made were unforced, but certainly a lot of them were forced as well by really hard line-speed and organised defence. It was a brilliant game to watch and I thought Georgia were excellent.”
