He scored an eye-catching try last weekend for Leinster against Harlequins, following on from strong game time for Ireland throughout November, when he played 80 minutes in the first three matches. On top of all that, he recently got engaged to partner Zoe Connolly.
Tommy O’Brien is beginning to believe things are coming together. Is it karma? Luck? Opportunity? Form? A mix of them all, most likely.
Either way, it has led to the fostering of opinion that O’Brien is playing the best rugby of his career.
Last Saturday, he made his try against Harlequins look simpler than it was. There was a crossfield kick from outhalf Harry Byrne. Then a check from O’Brien and a quick drop to the foot, where a gentle improvised poke along the ground allowed him to dash past the fringe defender and score.
RM Block
“I can’t say I was really thinking about it,” said O’Brien. “It just kind of happened. Sometimes it’s the best idea.”
Crossfield kicking has become a Leinster staple. The two 10s against Harlequins – Sam Prendergast and Byrne – were both involved in the precision passing.
Jordan Larmour, for his part, did well to score off Prendergast’s lateral kick.
“We always try to talk about attacking the best available space,” said O’Brien. “So ideally, we should be able to attack everywhere, so we should have a couple of different options each time.
“I kind of identified that that would be the way ‘Quins were defending in terms of 15 getting a little bit narrow and putting pressure on our skill set. So, sometimes a crossfield is a good way of exposing that.”
Even if the kicks didn’t work out and turned into contestable balls or went long into touch, the idea that Leinster have it in their armoury will ensure opposition teams must cover it.
If Prendergast starts against Leicester on Friday night at Welford Road, lateral kicking is a certainty. As O’Brien showed, it doesn’t have to be a straight-up aerial contest.
“I think what we want to say is that we want to be unpredictable in our attack. It’s obviously a great skill to have and a great way to score some tries,” he added. “But we don’t want to be a one-trick pony, so we should be able to attack whatever the space available is.”
Now 27, O’Brien agrees that with a better understanding of the demands of Test-match rugby, he has become more relaxed about it.
Whether or not putting pressure on himself as a younger player hindered his climb is a question he can never answer. Nor does it matter.
What he knows is that the process has made him better at handling the emotional stress as well as the physical. It has been an organic transformation that became apparent during the recent Test matches.
“I think I’ve gotten a lot better as I’ve gotten older,” he said. “Probably, as much as I hated old injuries that I got, now that I’m almost breaking through, and I’m 27 or so, I’m a lot more mature than if I’d broken through when I was 21, 22. I definitely put a lot more pressure on myself when I was younger and a lot more stress.
“Who knows if that was something to do with injuries, that I was putting pressure on myself and putting myself under so much stress.
“So, I think I am a lot more relaxed now going into games. I noticed that even with all the Autumn Nations games; I was thinking, ‘jeez, this is going to be a step up. I’m going to be really nervous here’. Thankfully, I didn’t find it daunting.”
That’s a good state of mind for travelling to Welford Road. A ground designed to intimidate visiting teams with small changing rooms and the heaving crowd, it is one of the most atmospheric stadiums in the Champions Cup.
Historic charm might be overplaying it, but the place has the traditional feel of outdoor bars and food stands that hark back to the glory days of Martin Johnson and Lewis Moody, not forgetting Leo Cullen.
“I’ve actually had the pleasure of playing over there twice in European games, off the bench both times, and we’ve gotten good results,” says O’Brien. Leinster have won there in their last two visits.
“But I’ve always been like, ‘wow, this is incredible’ – the atmosphere. They’re on top of you. It’s a small pitch. I’ve loved playing there.”
It’s the mood of the moment and it’s working well for O’Brien.
