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| | Monday, 17 June, 2002, 10:34 GMT 11:34 UK O'Driscoll: A chance missed BBC Sport Online columnist Brian O'Driscoll starting to feel the heat as Ireland prepare to face New Zealand. What a chance to beat the All Blacks. And we messed it up. Not a good weekend all round for Ireland was it? I wouldn't say that things went our way. After our move from Dunedin to Auckland we sat up and watched the Republic in action against Spain.
That was another big disappointment after our narrow defeat. A couple of silly mistakes and we let New Zealand away with it. We just did not make our territorial advantage and possession count. On a couple of occasions we could have had more favourable bounces. But that's the way it goes I'm afraid. It's not that we thought we could take them during the game. There's not a lot of thinking goes on in those circumstances. If things happens they happens. You are too busy concentrating to think that we are in with a great chance here. But in the end, we missed a glorious chance to break that duck against them. It's not going to be any easier in the second Test. They are going to up their performance. They will be bitterly disappointed with the way they played last week. They came in for some strong criticism in the local press.
Mind you, it just wasn't just their performance that made them look bad. We pressurised them throughout the game and made them make mistakes. So hopefully we can do something along the same lines this week. If we can just give a similar account of ourselves. While we were naturally gutted at the defeat, the squad was very upbeat afterwards as quite a number of good things came out of the game. Our defence was quite strong, although were a couple of blunders that let in tries. But we played to our patterns very well, and while we still have things to work at, we have a solid platform to build on. I have had a few enquiries about the gloves I wore, and I found them fine. I tried them out at training during the week and I thought I would chance it. It gets very cold in the evenings here, and a lot moisture on the surface of the pitches. Coupled with the new Adidas balls which are not particularly good for handling, I thought I would give the gloves a try and I thought they were quite good. There is a lot of discussion about the balls we are using out here. To be honest it's not just us that is having difficulty as Andrew Merhtens was also struggling to kick it.
It's hard to really decide what's wrong with it, but it certainly doesn't fly well in the air. I kicked it once or twice, and it doesn't appear to spiral at all, and also not having a fantastic grip in the wet, it's not the best ball I've played with. But at least, I did get a drop goal on Saturday. That was my second for Ireland and hopefully there's a few more. Still feel sorry for the soccer boys. They did extremely well to come back to get to the penalty shoot-out. To be honest they could have won it before then. They had their chances in extra-time as they showed that they wanted to win the game more. Maybe we can do something about that and make it a better weekend at Eden Park. | |
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