Jimmy O’Brien’s eyes locked on to referee Ben O’Keefe when the Ireland winger emerged from the final ruck in the Nations Championship game against Australia.
The Kiwi blew for a penalty against Ireland and, with the clock in the red, Ben Donaldson had a chance to clinch victory in Sydney. His kick started to the right of the posts and stayed right.
O’Brien let out a sigh of relief, just as he had when Bundee Aki was identified as the Irish player at fault in the ruck.
“Yeah, it was unbelievable,” he said. “It was class. I was actually in the ruck, and I was hoping it wasn’t me. Then when he said, I think, it was Bundee, I was like, ‘thank God’. I was worried for a second.
“When he [Donaldson] missed the kick, it was unbelievable. You never want to say that when someone misses a kick, but it was a great feeling. That was all that mattered.”
Ireland beat Japan a week later but then lost to New Zealand at their Eden Park fortress in Auckland, wrapping up their opening Nations Championship fixtures in July. O’Brien, who wasn’t in the original line-up in Sydney, started all three games.
Before the All Blacks clash, Andy Farrell said O’Brien was “on top of his game”.
James Lowe’s departure from Leinster for club rugby in Japan, along with the absence of the injured Tommy O’Brien and rehabbing Mack Hansen, opened the door for the versatile Kildare back three operator who got no game time for Ireland during the Six Nations.
“I was telling myself if I got a chance, I was going to go for it, 100 per cent,” he said. “I know that first week, I wasn’t supposed to play and it was unlucky that Rob [Baloucoune] had to pull out. Then I got the chance and I just had to take it.
“I’m getting older, so there’s not going to be too many chances. I just have to take every chance I get now.”
O’Brien had enjoyed the season building up to the summer tour. Thanks to an injury-free run, he was thinking and playing more freely, whereas previous campaigns had been disrupted by hamstring issues. He also suffered a serious neck injury after the last World Cup that ruled him out for five months.
“Even when I was playing, I wasn’t 100 per cent,” he said. “I just felt very good going into the end of last season. I took my time rehabbing, got back fully fit and just felt good.
“It’s easy to say, ‘just keep going when you’re down’, but you do get down about not getting selected, as anyone would. You just have to back yourself and be like, ‘when I get the chance, I’ll take it’.”
Ireland laboured to two victories and one defeat on the summer tour.
“As a team, we gritted out that win against Australia, it wasn’t the prettiest,” O’Brien said. “A bit better against Japan, and then against New Zealand, we didn’t put out the performance, which was frustrating.
“We gave them a few easy tries. Not impossible to come back from that, but very hard when you give them those opportunities.
“I’d still like to have played better. I think almost everyone would still like to have played better, but I thought I played decently. Hopefully I can stay on and hold on to that spot.”
Ireland will return to Australia for the World Cup in less than a year and the coaches and players have talked about it. O’Brien made his World Cup debut in 2023 in France – he didn’t feature until the final 25 minutes of the quarter-final defeat to the All Blacks, but made a big impression with that cameo.
“The best part of my career is going to a World Cup,” he said. “That’s the kind of stuff you dream of when you’re growing up. If you go back, probably a year before a World Cup happened, I didn’t think I had any chance but I did well that season and got in.
“When you are going through injuries, you tell yourself, ‘I played at that level and I know I can get back there’. It definitely gives you a bit of confidence when you come back, but you still have to prove it to yourself again.”
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Does belief get eroded during those difficult times? “A small bit,” he said. “If anyone says it doesn’t, I think they’re lying. Everyone goes through ups and downs. You have bad games, it can be like, ‘oh, will I get back to that level?’”
The key now is to play consistently well for Leinster leading into the Nations Championship games in November. He travelled to Lyons with the Leinster squad last weekend and was impressed by the young team’s performance in a narrow pre-season defeat.
“You see how young the lads are, and what years they’re born – it makes you feel quite old,” O’Brien (29) said with a laugh, while acknowledging he has become one of the team’s senior figures.
“I wouldn’t say I’ve changed my mindset. I was always trying to help younger players, even when I wouldn’t have known probably half as much as I would now.
“Leinster’s culture is quite good like that. When I was younger, it would be older lads helping you. So, you learn from that and try to help all the time. I wouldn’t say it was a massive kind of shift.”