Ever since former county minors Shane Horgan and Rob Kearney began ruling the D4 skies, it has been wondered whether those GAA-playing rugby stars held an inherent advantage in the air over their more solely rugby-playing colleagues.
While it's unlikely that anything more than a sense of patriotism will ever back up such a claim, interim head coach Simon Easterby did reveal that the advice of Dublin GAA great Brian Fenton played a role in Jamie Osbourne's crucial try over Wales last Saturday.
The try was just one of two Ireland scored in their eleven-point, 27-18 win over Wales in the Principality Stadium, which saw them claim a third Six Nations win on the bounce as well as the Triple Crown.
With Ireland facing a five-point deficit just after the fiftieth minute, a Sam Prendergast 50:22 followed up by a clever Jamison Gibson-Park cross-field kick under the protection of an advantage set Jamie Osbourne and James Lowe on a course for the most GAA-esque try you'll see in international rugby.
Like a prime midfielder going up for a throw-in under the Hogan Stand, Lowe made an acrobatic leap for JGP's touchline-nearing cross-field kick, knocking it back down into the path of Jamie Osbourne who fired over the line like a centre-back claiming a breaking ball, scoring Ireland's second try and drawing the affair level.
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Easterby hails impact of Brian Fenton in crucial try
Speaking about the training ground move after Ireland's defeat of Wales, Simon Easterby said the tap down to Osbourne by Lowe was no coincidence, claiming the Ireland team had taken on some of Brian Fenton's advice in their execution of the Andrew Goodman and Johnny Sexton thought up play.
That's genuinely something that Goody (Skills Coach Andrew Goodman) and Johnny (Sexton) have been working with the lads on, that aerial work, we had Brian in last week and there were things in there that the players definitely picked up on.
So, that's the massive part of the game, the aerial battle, finding a way for Lowey to tap that down for Jamie, that's not by chance. That's something that we've been working on. It doesn't always come off but he was good enough to back it up and get the reward off it.
The Dublin legend had spent some time in the Irish camp over a week ago, witnessing the professional set-up and departing what knowledge he could on the Irish backs, for whom recent rule changes have changed the way they contest for the ball aerially.
The most significant of the amendments to the aerial battle, mean players must now intentionally create access for defending and attacking players to contest the ball in the air - with plenty of players turning to high catches and slapping the ball back over the traditional bread basket catch - something Brian Fenton was notorious for during his decorated Dublin career.
If nothing else, Fenton's impact on the Irish squad shows that there is some place for the skills of a GAA star in the world of rugby.
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