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“Yes please,” replied Ellis, who appeared late in the second half. “Sitting on the bench does my head in.”Ellis has played against his opposite number today, Peter Stringer, before, notably in a Heineken Cup final during which he came off the bench, but this will be his debut at Lansdowne Road. “With his speed around the place, Jonny can kill a match,” Worsley said. “Poor decision-making has been one of the major things wrong with England, and that’s down to inexperience.

“We talk to each other a lot,” Worsley said, “and we’ve agreed that we’ll definitely exchange a few words on the pitch.”One of England’s mantras has been the need for quicker and cleaner possession, and one of O’Connor’s jobs is to ensure they don’t get it. He helps to make Ireland creative, but it’s nothing we can’t handle.”Whereas Ellis has not had an informal discussion with Murphy over a pint of Guinness, Joe Worsley, a back-row team-mate of O’Connor’s at Wasps, has shared a hot chocolate with the openside flanker. He’s a great talker, he organises things well, he’s a great distributor, and just a great guy to have on your side.”. If the Irish coaches need extra intelligence before putting the finishing touches to their campaign, they can have a discreet word with the players working behind enemy lines, Geordan Murphy of Leicester and Jonny O’Connor of Wasps. In the Celtic League final, O’Gara had been a victim of a reckless boot, missed the start of the Six Nations and had to bide his time before he came back.

But his performances in last year’s Triple Crown win and the autumn victories over South Africa and Argentina have put the O’Gara-Humphreys issue to bed.He has learnt to ride the bumps in what has been an undulating career. Missing the last-minute kick that would have won Munster the Heineken Cup in 2000; his poor kicking in the 2002 tour of New Zealand; having his eye blackened by Duncan McRae when with the Lions. What hasn’t killed him has made him stronger.”His mental strength is the best quality he has,” says O’Connell. “He could have a bad game one day and it’s water off a duck’s back. He’d be reading out his own bad reviews in the paper to us, slagging himself off Thankfully, for us, he rarely plays badly.

Not too long after he had taken his first steps he was sent to a summer “soccer school”, where Rodney Marsh taught him, among other things, how to strike the ball cleanly.After the family returned to Ireland and settled in Cork, Ronan threw himself into street-league hurling and Gaelic football, but his heart still belonged to football. He started supporting Liverpool when it was easy, and continued supporting them when it required some emotional investment.When Ireland last played England in Dublin, David Humphreys was the No 10. When the fans applauded the team through the lobby of the Berkeley Court, he would put his head down for fear of meeting anyone’s eyes “Nowadays I’m more confident and I enjoy it. If you can’t enjoy a game like this weekend, then you’re in the wrong jersey.”O’Gara might well have worn a jersey of a different colour had his father, a biotechnologist, not decided to come back from San Diego, where Ronan was born The first ball he kicked was round. “I would think that mental strength is something you’re reared with,” he says.