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League of Ireland Horse Racing TV Listings GAA Fixtures The Video Review Sport meets news, current affairs, society & pop culture Rugby Weekly Extra Dive into all the news and analysis 3 times a week The Football Family Weekly insights from the week’s big talking points Advertisement More Stories Paul O'Connell in Chicago yesterday.Dan Sheridan/INPHO 'We're trying to develop depth. We're trying to win now and in the future' Paul O’Connell discusses being interim boss, developing depth, and Ireland’s inconsistency. 5.01pm, 29 Oct 2025 Share options Murray Kinsella Reports from Chicago IRELAND ARE WARMING up at training in Chicago and Paul O’Connell has stepped into some lineout drills as a lifter for Jack Conan. 46-year-old O’Connell is in good nick and it looks as if he could still do a tidy job if Ireland were stuck for players some weekend. But then he misses a beat on one play, taking a step in the wrong direction as Conan moves forward to jump. You can see that O’Connell is immediately annoyed with himself, while Conan instantly starts slagging his forwards coach. These are O’Connell’s lineout plays after all. O’Connell takes a breath, they go again, and he nails his role the second time around. He’s a details man and this is the stuff he obsesses over. Convincing O’Connell to join the Ireland set-up ahead of the 2021 Six Nations remains one of the smartest things Farrell has done in his tenure. O’Connell swiftly brought a level of detail to the set-up that had been missing. The players had been craving more and O’Connell always delivers in-depth analysis and intensity. In fact, there are times when Farrell has to rein him back. Ireland’s lineout hasn’t always been perfect under O’Connell but it has often been world-class, while his influence extends to many other areas of the game. He is a crucial right-hand man for Farrell. During the summer, O’Connell got a taste of being the main man. He could have joined Farrell on the Lions tour but opted against it. Instead, he became the interim head coach of Ireland for their tour to Georgia and Portugal. He enjoyed the experience and learned a lot, but O’Connell says it’s nice to be back in his regular role. “I’m very happy in the trenches,” says the former Munster and Ireland second row when he’s asked if it has given him more desire to become a full-time head coach. “I just feel like I’m learning all the time and still have so much to learn. I think as an assistant coach there’s so many experiences you can have that can help you if you ever want to be a head coach, and I still feel I’m very much on that journey. O'Connell at Ireland training in Chicago.Dan Sheridan / INPHO Dan Sheridan / INPHO / INPHO “So, it’s a great experience for me to be able to go and do it for a little while and then duck back into what I’m more used to.” The biggest thing he took away from being the boss was around time management. As an assistant coach, O’Connell has always been pushing Farrell for more time with the players. He craves a few more minutes to go through lineout plans and drill them on the pitch. As O’Connell knows better now, the head coach has to make sure players aren’t overloaded. “When you’re a head coach, you’re probably looking at the bigger picture and you’re looking at the brain capacity of the players,” says O’Connell. “I was the coach taking time away from the assistant coaches where I used to be, and I’m back being, the assistant coach looking for more time. Advertisement “I probably have a better understanding of what a player goes through on the whole in a week. When you’re a lineout coach or a forwards coach or whatever, you just have to be cognisant of all the information that’s going into a player, be it defence, be it attack. “They might have an injury and a physio might feel that that half an hour with them is really important, and some of them might have a bit of college going on as well. “That’s something Andy does well with us as assistant coaches. He constantly challenges you on time and your messages and the length of it and how many are in it. I found myself doing that as well during the summer and I enjoyed that part of it.” The in-game experience was also different for O’Connell, who is used to giving Farrell information specifically about the lineout and forward play. As head coach, you have to filter all of the assistant coaches’ feedback, as well as consider substitutions and the overall game plan. “I enjoyed that part of it because you have assistant coaches feeding into you what they see, and you’re trying to pick and choose what you want the players to hear because they can’t take on a massive amount of information during the game either,” says O’Connell. “So, when you pick something, you need to try and make it count. In the Portugal game, I was delighted with the way the players played and even more so the way they played and finished the game in the second half having had a big lead. O'Connell was interim head coach for Ireland's summer tour.Ben Brady / INPHO Ben Brady / INPHO / INPHO “But I was really thrilled with the way the guys played against Georgia, given that we were trying to prepare all the time for dry, warm weather and we had to make a big shift on the day of the game [when there was torrential rain]. “The way the boys were very happy to completely change game plan and execute something different so quickly, so diligently was really enjoyable.” The tour left O’Connell enthused about the future of Irish rugby. With so many of Farrell’s frontliners joining him on the Lions tour, the Ireland squad in July featured lots of usual fringe players and some exciting fresh faces. Although O’Connell admits there are limited chances for new players to break into the national team, he believes there is plenty of talent ready and waiting. “I do. You even see it on the Emerging Ireland tours. I always think of Cathal Forde on the first Emerging tour that we went on. He’s a really established player now and is a fantastic rugby player, but at the time we knew very little about him. “I knew his name, I knew he was in Connacht, but I knew very little about him and after one training session, I remember Mike Catt saying, ‘This guy has it.’ “We’ve a lot of players in the system that just need a chance. They can’t always get the chance with the full Irish team so trying to have these Emerging tours, trying to have as many international games as we can and A games, is really important for us. “We try to always bring some extras in to train with us, to watch, to train, to see how we do things, to see how a seasoned international player prepares. It always brings them on, and it brings us on in terms of our confidence in that player as well. “So, the more we get to coach them and experience them and they get to experience us, the better it is for our depth.” In that sense, O’Connell expresses his disappointment that Munster pair Edwin Edogbo – “who we’ve been trying to get in for a while” – and Brian Gleeson were ruled out with injury after being named to travel to Chicago with Ireland. “We probably are trying to develop squad depth the same as anyone else, but probably we’re trying to win now and in the future, and that’s really important for us,” says O’Connell. “We’re trying to evolve rather than make big changes, and, you know, that’s what the Emerging tour gives us, that’s what the tour in the summer gives us, that’s what bringing guys into camp as much as possible. “We’re always trying to figure out ways to build depth, looking forward to the World Cup, but also trying to maintain what we stand for as much as possible.” With that in mind, Ireland are set to field a familiar-looking team for this weekend’s clash against the All Blacks. O'Connell on a visit to Connacht recently.James Crombie / INPHO James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO O’Connell says it definitely is a challenge for Ireland to hit the ground running, given that so many of their players have only played once so far this season after being with the Lions late into the summer. Yet he points out that this is a challenge they embraced by agreeing to make it a run of four November Tests with this additional game in Chicago. “We want more fixtures, we want to get as much time with the players as we can, we want big games for the players,” says O’Connell. “This November is a great opportunity for us to give game time in big, big games to players. So it’s not ideal, but I think our player of the tour down in New Zealand in 2022, Tadhg Beirne, and he’d come off the back of a considerable injury break. “We’ve a few guys that have plenty of game time under their belt, we’ve a few guys that, you know, the last games they played were highly competitive, tough games, they got a break, they were injury-free, they played in the summer, so they’re a lot further down the track than people might believe. “That’s why we came over early, we’ve had two really good, fast sessions, we’ve one more fast session to get under our belt. “I think we’ll be in a good place come Saturday. It’s not perfect but getting an extra fixture was never going to be perfect in such a busy year, but it is what it is.” O’Connell and Ireland are realistic about how last season went for them. They won four out of five games in the Six Nations, as well as three out of four in the 2024 November Tests, but the performances weren’t always what they wanted. Now Ireland hope to get back into the kind of groove they had in their excellent 2022/23 period. “Probably a little bit inconsistent,” is O’Connell’s assessment. “We had a really good start to the Six Nations. That English game was a really tough game; we weathered the storm and came back and that’s a good English team, and we came back and beat them well. “Same away to Scotland, we played really well and after that we were probably a little bit inconsistent. “In the Welsh game, there was some really good bits of play, a really good start against France, and then we were probably a little bit inconsistent after that and that’s frustrating for us as coaches, in terms of what we are doing, it’s probably frustrating for the lads as well. “I think that probably was a hallmark of that good period of form, it was a real consistency to how we played and how we delivered our game and that’s the challenge for us as players, as the squad evolves bit by bit, that’s the challenge for us, is to get back to that.” Happily back in his support role alongside Farrell, there’s no doubt O’Connell will have a big part to play in that mission. 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