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  • Rugby World

    INSIDE THE TEAM TALKS

    Jan 04, 2022 5 minutes
    Words ALAN DYMOCK
    Main Image KAI SCHWOERER / GETTY IMAGES

    YOU HAVE likely seen the clip. Ireland legend Paul O’Connell, in full flow, shouting about “manic aggression” in the changing room, all fire, brimstone and bane. It’s an artefact of a time when one of the country’s great modern captains electrified his side. And it’s one the man himself has paused to consider.

    In his 2016 autobiography, The Battle, O’Connell wrote of his relationship with the much-romantacised speech: “I know a lot of people’s impressions of my character came from what they saw of me in the dressing room at Croke Park in 2007, just before we played France in the Six Nations – the clip from the documentary where I was going on about ‘manic aggression’, about putting `the fear of God’ into someone. It was a good documentary,

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