Gerry Thornley talks to Ireland's defensive coach Mike Ford ahead of next week's major test

The Irish defence has tightened up lately. Only seven tries conceded in eight games this season. But there's been some dark days along the way, notably the five tries conceded at Twickenham and in Paris, and again in Auckland. When Denis Hickie stood up at the team meeting four days after the 45-11 defeat to England, Mike Ford thought his number might be up.

Recently installed as Ireland's defensive coach, Ford shrunk a little in his chair.

"I thought he was going to say 'Listen Eddie, on behalf of the players, this system doesn't work. Let's go back to doing what we were doing before. This guy doesn't know what he's talking about'. Or words to that affect. I honestly believed he was going to say that."

Instead, Hickie defended the system, admitting the team hadn't applied what Ford had taught them on the training ground. 'Let's stick with it', Hickie said.

"That was the big turning point," admits Ford, looking back on his first year's involvement with team Ireland. "It's funny though, you do need those dark days, to prove to the players you haven't been doing the system right, that you haven't been going through what we've been doing in training. So then you can show them what they were doing wrong on the video. But until they do it themselves, only then will they ultimately believe in the system."

He's a good guy. Very helpful. Very talkative. Very enthusiastic. A keen student of the game, and very ambitious. But he's slowed down too. As much as he's helped Ireland to develop a new defensive system, his time with Ireland has opened his eyes. He's imparting, and he's learning.

"I didn't enjoy it at first. I'll admit that. I couldn't get my head around why union teams train the way they do. League is black and white. Half the time you defend, and half the time you attack. So half the time in training is spent on attacking, and half on defending. And I wanted half the time on defence, but crikey, it doesn't work like that, for a number of reasons. But once I got my head around that, I really started enjoying it."

The New Zealand tour granted him more time on the training ground, while the setpieces were sorted out to reduce the load on the defence. Now he maximises his one-on-one time with the players.

"We've progressed slowly," he says guardedly. "Anything worthwhile takes time."

Ford punctuates his defensive philosophy with the words "common-sense" or "black and white". It ain't, he says, rocket science. Long before he started working on tackling techniques, he had to get the system in place.

"I had to get people into the right positions. If you're the best tackler in the world but you're not in the right position, you might as well be sat in the stand with me.

"Lately, I've had to work on positions, because you have to tweak your system for each game. Australia and Argentina play completely differently, Scotland were tight, Italy were a bit more relaxed. Looking though the video, our technique is pretty poor again. I'm nit-picking, but now we can analyse and grade every tackle."

He's not kidding himself. He knows France will ask the most difficult defensive questions of anybody yet this season, especially out wide. Much more adept at offloading in the tackle, France are more naturally gifted runners and athletes. For example, had they worked a six-on-two overlap, as the Scots did, he knows they wouldn't have blown it.

You ask him what went wrong there that the overlap was allowed to happen?

"We got busted. If you rewind from the final play we got busted two plays before that. We got busted 'at pillar', which is the ruck. Then they went down the right, when Girvan missed a tackle there, but it started at the ruck.

"The principle of my defence is they don't go through us. So if they were going to score a try, they're going to score it in the corner with our winger and full back on his back. And then they have to score the conversion from the touchline. One rule, the golden rule, is that they never come through us."

Ford wants his forwards, and ideally the props, as "pillar one", or the first defender either side of the breakdown and the faster backs further out. Rugby league is simpler, with players' positions over phases more easily defined. Hence, his biggest challenge in becoming a union coach was reorganising defences over multiple phases so forwards and backs stayed as close as possible to their designated positions.

Ask him what his biggest difficulty was when first linking up with Ireland and Ford jokes, "You mean apart from my accent?"

In fact there's a hint of truth there, for he was, he admits, an outsider with little or nothing on his CV to make a real impression on the players.

"Nobody knew me, so first of all I had to get a little respect. 'Can he coach? Does this guy know what he's talking about?' I believe in the system so much and then I've got to convey that to the team. But I've been so lucky in that Eddie has backed me to the hilt."

The other key backer was Keith Wood. Coincidentally, on Ford's first working trip to Limerick as defensive coach, Wood was on the same flight from England, and revealed to Ford how enthusiastic he was about the advent of a new defensive coach to the team.

He looks back on his first few sessions in wonderment. He had taken a "massive risk" to forsake a three-and-a-half year deal as head coach at Oldham to take up an initial six-month contract with the IRFU. He'd had a five-year stint with an English lower division union club, Dukinfield, bringing them from the 12th division to the eighth in five years. But he couldn't get a Superleague club with his relative inexperience, and it was the challenge of working with professional and international players which held most appeal.

Another convert from rugby league, English defensive coach Phil Larder, was a formative influence. Born in Oldham, he has known Larder since the latter taught him at school when Ford was 11. They renewed their friendship when Larder was coach to the British league team, which Ford played for.

A scrumhalf, Ford played for Castleford, Leigh, Wigan, Wakefield, Warrington and the South Queensland Crushers.

"I always knew I wanted to coach. I started my qualifications at 22, and I was a fully qualified coach at 24. I was captain of teams as well. I was that type of player. I knew there was nothing else I wanted to do. I always wanted to be involved in sport."

Ford describes Daryl van der Veld, his coach at Castleford and at South Queensland Crushers, as his mentor, not just in rugby but in life.

"When I went to Castleford I was 25, I'd played for Britain, I'd been on the Lions tour, I'd won at Wembley, a cocky kid, a number seven. And I didn't know jack shit. Until I met this guy. And he made me understand the game better. It took me six months to understand him."

It transpired van der Veld's mentor was Vince Lombardi, the legendary American football coach. Ford has recently read Lombardi's biography, When Pride Still Mattered, and takes comfort from Lombardi not becoming a head coach until he was 46.

His contract with the IRFU has been extended until the conclusion of the World Cup - he doesn't know what will happen after that. He desperately wants to be a head coach but he also wants to keep learning. He's not even sure his future will be in rugby league, believing union will overtake league as a sport and as a global entity, if it hasn't already.

Judgment on him, he knows, awaits the outcome of the Six Nations. As things stand, he'd like the Irish defence to be more developed than it is, though he admits it's been better than he expected in the last couple of games. Generating belief in the defensive system, however, from the games against France and England is vital in readiness for the ultimate goal of the World Cup.

No less than O'Sullivan, Ford knows the verdict on his time will hinge on results.

"If we can do well in the Six Nations and ultimately if Ireland can get to the semi-finals of the World Cup and do well then that's job done, yeah."