In three weeks' time, Ireland's cricketers will get their ICC World Cup campaign underway.
Placed in Pool B alongside giants of the sport like South Africa, Pakistan, India and the West Indies, the team will hope to match their achievements from the 2007 tournament when they reached the last-8 stage.
Before they take on the West Indies in their opening match on February 16th, the team have warm-up games to get the blood pumping and with that to look forward to, Ed Joyce and Kevin O'Brien joined Off The Ball to talk about their hopes for the tournament and mixing it with the best consistently.
"The days are gone where we have to talk about giant-killing," said Joyce. "We've got to move on from that. In 2007 and 2011, I think we were in that situation but we need to feel like we can win any game. We've got to target that first game against the West Indies and look to win."
O'Brien also spoke about his satisfaction at developing into an all-rounder by bowling more since the last World Cup.
The lads also touched upon team-mate John Mooney's revelation about suffering depression, and said they will be conscious of being aware of it.
"John's struggled a little bit with depression which a lot of us didn't know about until very recently when he was very open about it. It's fantastic that he came out and was so open and honest about it. There have been a few high profile cases as well but we do spend a lot of time away," said Joyce, while O'Brien added that "I think we've got a great respect for each player individually that if we recognise that someone's not at his best form, we give him the space to get back to normality."
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