Paul O’Connell gets misty-eyed as he reflects on the changes in rugby since his 2001 debut

We've come a long, long way together, through the hard times and the good.

Paul O'Connell will turn 36 on October 20. In the real world he is several years short of the leather jacket, hair-dye and fast car. In rugby terms, he is an old-stager. The Ireland captain is in the final straight when it comes to his international career. The next month will determine whether he has two matches left for his country or, with any luck, five. O'Connell says he is still excited by the prospect of lining out for Ireland at the World Cup. "Yeah, more than ever because there isn't many more of them to come. I really enjoy them, especially the build-up during the week, the way we prepare is very enjoyable. Training is really competitive and very enjoyable. "You go out and prepare for training the same way you prepare for a match. You want to be error-free, you want to tick all the boxes and that's one thing I've enjoyed over the last two years, about training." O'Connell made his Munster debut in August 2001. His Test bow with Ireland followed, six months later, as he scored a try and got concussed in a win over Wales. [caption id="attachment_42550" align="aligncenter" width="630"] 'What's this social media doohickey?'[/caption] The lock was asked about the changes he has witnessed over the past 15 years. He took a moment to reflect, and smile, before answering:

"There’s a massive difference to when I started playing in terms of what we do. "I mean, even though we train way less than when I started, we would have done one hour, 40 minutes session twice a week, 90 minutes on Thursday and 45 minutes on Friday. We rarely go over 60, 70 minutes so, even though we do way less, there’s more detail to what we’re doing. "I don’t know how other teams play but a lot of our moves, we work hard a lot at them and put them in place through repetition and working at them."

He added, "Back in the day, you won your lineout ball and it was whatever happens after that, you play away. "You might have a few little sneaky moves down the front of the lineout or at the back of the lineout that you rehearse, but by in large, there wasn’t a whole to it more than that and even though that’s the way we played, we trained a lot more for it." "Is it a better product?" he pondered. "I don’t know, I think so. "I think this World Cup has been pretty incredible to watch. Some of the lesser teams have played incredible rugby and improved their standards so much. There’s incredible players to watch so, yeah, if you go by this World Cup so far, I think it’s a better product."