Ruck and Maul: From Bond to confessional box, O'Connell takes role as Mr Motivator
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Your support makes all the difference.Irish radio station Today FM paints an affectionate picture of the new Lions captain in the spoof "A day in the life of Paul O'Connell", available on YouTube. A wake-up alarm rings. "Uh," grunts O'Connell, before a motivational momentum builds quickly. "Did I sleep well? Did I get every single last minute of possible sleep out of this bed?" There's a trip to the cinema for a Bond movie, where it's "Chin up, chest out, let those terrorists know where you are!" Then a stint in the confessional: "I lied, father, I was disrespectful, I knocked down a pass in training." "Say three Hail Marys, my son," the priest says softly. "Can you not do better than that, father? Ask yourself, did I give this guy enough punishment? Push it, father, come on, have you got the bottle?"
Meaty Boks underdone?
Speculation or perhaps blind hope is rife as to whether the Springboks – having not played a Test since November – will be underprepared when they meet the Lions in Durban on 20 June. South Africa's Test players are said by a spokesman to be "unlikely" to feature in the six provincial sides facing the Lions before the first Test, though coach Peter de Villiers has the final call. Asked whether he would like to face the Boks in the preparatory games, Ian McGeechan said: "I don't mind either way. It helps us one way and helps them another." Butch James's fading hope of a call-up for the Boks has been snuffed out by a cruciate ligament injury which could keep Bath's World Cup-winning fly-half out for nine months.
Dad's Army won't panic
The South African rugby press do not have quite the vitriolic reputation of their counterparts in Australia and New Zealand, but Ruck and Maul predicts some "Dad's Army" headlines – circa 2003 and thrown at Martin Johnson's England – being dusted down soon. Four Lions flankers, whose stamina will be tested at altitude as much as anyone's, are aged 32 or over, and Paul O'Connell at 29 will be the only one of the four out-and-out locks under 30. At the suggestion he might be the Captain Mainwaring of the piece, O'Connell did not panic. The (Lions) captain said: "We're not building for the future, you know, we're not building towards a World Cup. We are going to South Africa for two months and trying to win a Test series."
Low point for Ubogu
Not that the Lions are ignoring the altitude factor. The 16 or so players without club commitments in the second week of May will spend a week at the Sierra Nevada high performance centre in southern Spain. At 2,320 metres above sea level it will replicate the conditions of the Lions' opening matches in Rustenburg (1,500m above sea level), Johannesburg (1,753m) and Bloemfontein (1,395m). They then drop down to coastal Durban, scene of the England prop Victor Ubogu's infamous remark as he staggered through a training run on the beach: "What altitude are we at here?"
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