Irish eyes on Samoan boost

Ireland prop Barrie McDermott gives BBC Sport Online his exclusive preview of their World Cup opener against Samoa.

Our main objective against Samoa has got to be to get the win and we really need that good start.

We obviously want to rack up as many points for and concede as few as we can.

The group stage is very difficult and it's going to be even harder if we don't get the right result in Belfast.

All three of our opponents have the potential to turn us over.

Fourth favourites

It's been well documented that we are fourth favourites to win the World Cup, but we don't pay too much attention to that.

Our expectations are quite high but we realise that it's only going to be hard work that will get us there.

The preparations have been going really well.

Our expectations are quite high but we realise that it's only going to be hard work that will get us there

  Barrie McDermott

We did a spot of warm weather training out in Spain at La Manga and that was hard, with two sessions a day, with lots of fitness and weights work as well.

It's all worthwhile though as we come to the World Cup and we are primed and ready to go.

We've got quite a good spirit and we've drummed up a lot of enthusiasm amongst ourselves, so we are very much looking forward to it.

Useful exercise

We only had a short game against each other in Spain, with 13 versus 11 and I thought that was a useful exercise.

I know England and Wales both had international matches in their warm-weather build-up but what we did was probably as good as England got with the 110-0 thrashing they gave America.

Ones to watch - Tommy Martyn and Brian Carney

The Irish public have caught onto what's going on out here in Belfast and everybody's been really inquisitive, asking about the rules and how the game is won or lost.

I feel they're just keen to have something they can smile about and if they give it a chance, I think they'll enjoy it.

Tommy Martyn is the man to watch for us. He got most of the best player votes from this team and also from my club team Leeds.

He's a real player's player, very unselfish and he does a lot for the good of the team.

A dark horse might be Brian Carney, one of our Irish-born players, from Hull FC.

He's really explosive and strong and with the ball in his hands, he can be devastating.