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April 3, 2010

Posted on 04/03/2010

Just what the good Doctor ordered

In a wide ranging interview with Gerry Thornley of the Irish Times, the now retired IRFU director of fitness Dr. Liam Hennessy outlines what went wrong at Ireland's disastrous 2007 World Cup.

“I think simply the Genesis report states the boys couldn’t have been in better shape. That’s not me saying it. That’s an independent body saying it. They did their homework to find that out. We had a 52-week countdown plan where all the guys, all our guys, were involved in making sure the guys were in the best possible shape. There was great harmony in how it worked. Then Eddie (O’Sullivan) who is in my book an outstanding coach, Eddie did put his hands up and by his own admission said he got it wrong on that front."
"By this Hennessy means in terms of match preparation and actual pitch work. “I suppose there was a panic . . . here were a couple of moments I would imagine of realisation that ‘Oh we ain’t ready, rugby wise, for the game’. We’ve gone through it ad nauseam, and it was a huge stressful time for everybody. I know the guys in terms of strength, power, speed, everything they were way up there,” he says, pointing his hand above his head and suggesting their physical endurance for the rest of that season and since underlines the point.

"So they were over-trained, or in Hennessy’s terminology, over-practised.

“I mean, look, it’s a lesson for everybody. You can’t fatten the pig before the fair. You can’t cram in all those hours of extra work on the pitch technically. You can’t keep doing that through the tournament. That only goes one way, down in terms of performance. So that over-concentration on ‘let’s get this right’, ‘let’s do more on the pitch to make up for what’s not being done and to make up for the lack of performances’. So that’s what I mean by mistakes being made and lessons learned.”

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