Seán O'Brien has been racking up the airmiles this season.The versatile Munster back is approaching the end of his second trip to South Africa in the space of a month, having been in Bloemfontein with Emerging Ireland in late September, before making a return trip to Cape Town and now Durban for Munster’s two-game tour in the BKT United Rugby Championship.While Alex Kendellen, Ethan Coughlan, Evan O’Connell and Ben O’Connor all stayed behind in South Africa following that Emerging Ireland tour, as they waited for their Munster team-mates to join them the following week, O’Brien made a short trip home to help ease his side’s injury list, starting against Leinster at Croke Park, before hopping on a plane for Cape Town a few days later."I loved it.
It was good to get up into the Irish setup," O’Brien says of that stint with Simon Easterby’s development side in Bloemfontein.The Mullingar native started the first two of those games on tour before being released back to his province.And the former Ireland U20 international says it was invaluable to get face-time with some of the Irish coaches, particularly to get an insight into how Ireland defend under Simon Easterby."It’s obviously quite a while since I’ve played 20s [in 2018], so it was good to get back into an Irish camp and get familiar with how the squad does things, get to know the coaches, and have them get to know me."I suppose from a defensive point of view, it was probably a little bit more aggressive than our system [at Munster], where obviously [we have] that line speed defence as well, the same as the Irish team."But probably for the outside backs, just being a little bit more aggressive and getting up into that space outside a bit quicker.