RUGBY: JOHNNY WATTERSONfinds scrumhalf Tomás O'Leary in good form with last season's injuries behind him and his World Cup dreams rekindled

TOMÁS O’LEARY is in a good place. He looks towards September now, the scraps of a tattered season behind him. His thumb, his back and a freakish eye injury contributed to a campaign that is best viewed from the vantage point of the Ireland squad’s billet of Carton House looking back than from where he was three months ago, scrambling through injury and uncertainty unable to look forward.

The good place is injury free and with a few weeks’ training in his legs.

The good place is the rekindled aspirations, the promise of New Zealand and a World Cup. The good place is nothing more than again being given a chance.

The scrumhalf was undergoing speed training with a sled during an Ireland squad session prior to Ireland’s game against England when one of the elastic straps snapped, hitting him in the left eye. In time his badly-injured eye would repair but his season was shot.

Serendipity. O’Leary’s misfortune was Conor Murray’s gold. The injury gifted his Munster team-mate with a passage into the Ireland squad. With O’Leary on the sideline, the younger scrumhalf started in eight of Munster’s last 10 matches of the season and last month found himself among the five number nines in Declan Kidney’s extended World Cup squad.

“Feeling good, feeling fit,” quips O’Leary. “All the injuries behind me. Really enjoying training properly and really looking forward to the summer series of games. Obviously, I didn’t finish the season in a great manner. But I feel good now and I’m excited about this season.”

There are two seasons this year. There is the World Cup season that starts now and ends, hopefully in late October.

Then there is some down time and a season with Munster will take players to the Six Nations.

It’s a longer road than usual but for now the World Cup is the attention seeker and it has O’Leary’s full regard.

He earned five minutes for Ireland against Argentina prior to the last World Cup. But his run for a place in Ireland’s camp in Bordeaux was too late and Eddie O’Sullivan left for France with a 30-man squad, Stringer, Reddan and Boss in tow.

“I had got my first cap the previous summer against Argentina,” he says.

“I got five minutes, was brought in on the wing. I was training with the squad alright but I wasn’t in line for selection, realistically.

“It’s a major goal of mine to go to the World Cup and play well there so it’s different from four years ago. Definitely.”

This time he is more expectant. He owned the shirt for a while and then it fell to Eoin Reddan, with Isaac Boss also filling it. This time his game is known to Kidney, his strengths approved. “I probably would have had to have done something exceptional to have broken into a World Cup squad back then. Now obviously I’ve played for Ireland a good few times,” he says.

“I’m just excited that I’m training and there’s the carrot of the World Cup. I suppose I kind of feel refreshed. When I was going through the injuries last season and it was dragging on a bit I had that in the back of my mind as a focus and as a goal. It kind of kept me going, alright.”

O’Leary says it now and Reddan said it earlier in the week the shirt is currently unoccupied. Reddan was adamant he is not the current holder but that over the next three weeks, all five will have to prove themselves to Kidney before he starts the selection process for the four international matches in August. It will come down to form and Kidney’s notion of what he wants his number nine to be. In O’Leary’s favour his strength and ability around the fringes was to Kidney’s liking before. But two players will not leave Ireland.

“I don’t know what way Deccie’s (Kidney) thinking,” he says. “But I think it’s very much open. It will all be down to form and how lads play in the build up to the World Cup. Obviously last season will have an impact on it but all I can focus on now is to get a game or two in the summer series and try to impress the coaches. I’m happy enough that there is a chance for me to get back in the nine jersey.”

O’Leary has worked with the sledge again – last Friday in Maynooth. But he hasn’t pulled it towards him yet. All in time. He smiles. He’s in a good place. “Yeah, it’s get back on the horse.”