While it wasn’t the rout some expected, nor did Ireland come anywhere near a bonus-point win, Simon Easterby took more from the manner his team, with a fair sprinkling of inexperience by the end, ultimately doused Welsh fervour to pull through in Cardiff on Saturday afternoon.
Ireland’s interim head coach expressed himself “pleased with the result” while acknowledging there were “lots of things in the game that we feel we could have done better”, but also put Ireland’s 27-18 win in the context of going down to 14 men for 20 minutes and trailing 18-10.
We go down in the game, we go down a man and then we go down on the scoreboard. We came in at half-time and felt like if we played in the right way and did things better our way, then we felt we could dominate them.
“We had a lot of possession and territory for 30 minutes, just didn’t quite get our accuracy right in terms of scoring the points that we needed.
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“We knew that Wales would come back into it if we gave them an opportunity and we did that. I was pleased that we responded to being in a bit of a hole and we dug ourselves out and took the game away from them in the last 20.”
Ireland’s composure no doubt emanated from their experienced core. The backrow were immense, winning turnovers at key times, with Jack Conan leading the Irish charge until a back issue forced him off early in the second half to be replaced effectively by Ryan Baird. Josh van der Flier had a huge impact and Peter O’Mahony put in a huge 80-minute shift, leading the tackle count with 19,
But, having been led by a new captain for 75 minutes, Ireland ultimately sealed a 14th Triple Crown with four Six Nations debutants on the pitch and an outhalf playing just his second away Test.
Once again Sam Prendergast was compelling viewing and a barometer of this team’s performance. He produced arguably the moment of the match with that wondrous, spiralled 50/22 in the lead-up to Jamie Osborne’s try. Even then, the 22-year-old outhalf put one ball out on the full but still steered Ireland home with three sweetly struck penalties.
“Building those experiences for players, playing in the Millennium Stadium with the roof closed, the third game of a Six Nations where everything is probably against the team you’re playing against, and then we come out and get a result like that, that’s exactly what we are trying to do all the time.
“We are trying to build continuity in selection but also build that depth and understand and know-how and experiences they wouldn’t get playing URC rugby or European rugby.
“I was really pleased with all the guys who had the opportunity to start the game, guys off the bench. Obviously Jack Boyle, a special mention to him, making his debut.
“He has worked really hard to get to this position, he’s had a lot of support from family and people around him but he’s been excellent this week. He was excellent last Friday in the Liberty [for Leinster against the Ospreys]. I think he showed today why he has got a bright future.”
Ireland had to dig themselves out of a hole when Garry Ringrose’s yellow card was upgraded to a sending off, and were indebted therefore to the law change which meant this was deemed a 20-minute red card and so he could be replaced by Bundee Aki.
“Those can go either way,” said Easterby of Ringrose’s punishment. “Ringer’s a great player for us, everything he does is with intent, in terms of the speed he works at. That’s probably what cost him there, the speed of his movement off the line and he just doesn’t quite drop enough. He’s certainly far from a dirty player, it’s just one of those things, it could have gone either way. It could have been a yellow.
“There was another incident late in the game that could have gone either way. It didn’t fall in our favour, these things happen. I was pleased with how the lads responded to that, even though we conceded at the end of the first half we found our way back into the game when we were down and man and Bundee coming on made a huge impact.
“We would have certainly taken this a few weeks back. The mark of this group, the players in particular, they always want to get better and keep striving to chase down things which maybe other teams can’t do.
“That’s going to continue to drive the team over the next few weeks towards France. Getting a result today in very different circumstances to when we played Scotland and the home game against England means we keep building the experiences and driving the mentality to do things really well our way. That was evident today in different circumstances.”
Easterby said that Mack Hansen had gone off due to cramp and that there were no injury concerns that he was aware of save for Conan’s back problem.
“He felt he was struggling to open up. That happens in games sometimes, I think his foot fell awkwardly.”
Easterby also sounded confident that the missing captain Caelan Doris will recover from his knee injury for the round four game at home to France next Saturday week.
“He’s done really well. He ran yesterday out on the pitch during the captain’s run. We’d be confident he’s trucking in the right direction and hopefully we see a bit of an improvement as the week goes on.”
For Dan Sheehan, lifting the Triple Crown trophy sealed a memorable first day as Irish captain.
“It was an incredible privilege to lead that bunch of men. There’s probably anyone in that team could have led it and there are huge leaders in the team. It was a huge honour to be given the opportunity to be able to lead the side this week.
“A tough one to lead today but that’s exactly what we talk about all week, preparing for the moments when things aren’t going your way and how calm we can stay in those moments and get ourselves out of it. Tricky game but nice to get out on the right side.”
