The words 'Grand' and 'Slam' have become toxic this week in the Ireland camp. They have been locked in the dirty word box along with others that spell discomfort and complication in general conversation. Concussion, drugs. Dirty words. Don't bring them up.
If Joe Schmidt could be accurately distilled into his own group of defining words they would be different. Forensic. Orderly. Fixated.
This week has been like that, a succession of word associations beginning on Monday with D’Arcy, Sexton, injury, kicking. It moved to Tuesday where it was O’Connell and 100. Into Wednesday and it moved on. Roof. Open. Closed.
Devin Toner is both aware of the frenzy and in his own cocoon of self-restraint. He constantly reminds himself that the hype and the energy and changing angles on Ireland's meeting with Wales is coming from outside the camp and no more than circulating air. Chilled. Grounded. Schooled.
“Relaxed is where you want to be. I don’t really get hyped up at all,” says the Irish lock.
“I don’t really ‘manage’ it at all to be honest. I just kind of get on with it. I don’t read the newspapers or see much that goes on. Obviously people want to talk about it but I think I’m just naturally kind of relaxed about it. It doesn’t really faze me. It’s where you want to be . . .”
Riding shotgun to Paul O’Connell brings its own rewards and demands. In that sense Toner is the understudy this week in terms of the billing. A secondrow that few would have bet on making it this far five years ago, he has defied his physical dimensions, which in the early days were limitations and become effective across the pitch and more than just height for hire.
Self-critical
Against
England
he was pleased but in the growing tradition of constant improvement and falling under the Schmidt microscope, also self-critical.
“I am and I’m not [pleased],” he says. “I think there is stuff I still have to work on. I don’t think that my rucking has been great so far this year. I obviously got up in the air and stole a few lineouts but that’s just an extra to the secondrows. You need to get your ruck right. I don’t think I have in the past couple of games but I’m working on it . . .
“Looking back on it there’s just a few occasions I didn’t get the right position, didn’t get the clean out. Just little stuff like that I was disappointed with.”
With the Welsh pair of Alun-Wyn Jones and Luke Charteris charged with locking horns in the secondrow, he is not averse to looking at O'Connell and having a bit of what the Ireland captain has in his locker.
“I did have a look at how he cleaned out the ruck,” he says. “He gets in very low. He gets his shoulder in and drives past. Just seeing how he is around that area, I’m just trying to replicate that to be honest.”
Far from sexy
Rucks, lineouts and scrums define Toner’s game. While it’s far from the sexy world of Sexton, Henshaw or Zebo, it’s where the margins deliver in spades.
Wayne Barnes
, a referee who it was pointed out would spot a man not opening a door for a woman up in the West Stand, will judiciously apply the laws at scrum time.
Ireland will tactically play the referee as much as Warren Gatland’s team and in Barnes, a practising barrister, the players know what to expect. Barnes trains with frontrow coaches and has learned how to identify, by their body shapes, props that are in scrum distress.
Raising his arm one way or the other is far from guesswork, a view with which the various rugby talking shops might disagree. Most people in the Millennium Stadium can’t see the details of scrums and many watching television don’t know a slipped bind from a slipped disc. Naturally, opinions are rife.
“A huge thing in the scrum is making the right impression and painting the right pictures,” explains Toner. “If we’re staying up and they’re always going down, it’s positive pictures. Barnes loves to reward the dominant team. If he sees a team going forward, he’s very much with the dominant side.
"Greg Feek would mention a few things about Barnes in our scrum meetings. In our lineout meetings, we would mention a few things. But we don't spend a whole lot [of time] on the referee."
Today it’s hard to get him overly excited. Popping with energy is not part of the mood music of staying in the moment. Baldwin. Charteris. Jones. No discomfort with those words. Come Saturday he will hope to rise to them.
