Ireland finished off a clean sweep of the Autumn internationals after a heart stopping 26-23 win over Australia yesterday. There was a lot of talk in the build up to the game that Ireland needed to back up their performance against South Africa and having raced to a 17-0 lead before being pegged back by the Wallabies; we can safely put any doubts about the resiliency of this Irish side to bed after they tightened up in the second half to see out the win.
The Green and Gold website were less than flattering about Ireland in their scoring summary:
Ireland have beaten the Wallabies 26-23 in a thriller on Lansdowne Road early on Sunday morning. After racing to a 17 point lead against the run of play within the opening 15 minutes, the Irish let the Wallabies back into the game with weak defence and suspect commitment.
Their (Ireland's) ability to put pressure on Australia with kicks masked the fact that the Irish were largely unable to generate any pressure with ball in hand.
From the same website, author Mike Penistone questions aspects of Ireland's play and believes Australia are still ahead of Joe Schmidt's team:
Schmidt, Sexton and O’Connell all see Ireland as a performance, focused-driven squad. Michael Cheika is honest in his analysis of team and player performance. He is a day-by-day coach; the players know what’s required. There is a similarity between the coaches, but the Wallabies team performance and playing tempo is ahead of Ireland’s in both attack and defensive organisation.
Ireland offered little in constructive back play after half time. Darcy may soon follow O’Driscoll, and Sexton needs a centre who can run ahead of him before he makes his trade mark looping run.
The Roar.au continued the Aussie theme of grudging respect for Ireland's kicking game:
The Wallabies’ only victory that year came at Lansdowne Road but they returned this week having been overtaken in the rankings by Europe’s form team, who beat South Africa a fortnight ago. Chasing a seventh straight Test win, the Irish raced to a 17-0 lead thanks to some clever early kicking tactics, with superstar five-eighth Johnny Sexton the architect.
His pin-point cross-field effort led to winger Simon Zebo’s opening try in the 12th minute before Tommy Bowe extended the lead with an 85-metre intercept try three minutes later.
Fox Sports are more confident of the green and gold future after their AVIVA performance:
Overall the game was a huge improvement on the last two Tests against Wales and France, and offers hope for the future.
That future might not start as early as next week against England at Twickenham, but if the team can continue to improve, the prospects for next year’s Rugby World Cup are definitely on the up.
For the three weeks that Cheika has been in charge of the national side, he has preached a new approach: a game that would combine physicality with enterprise; confidence with anger.
The Herald Sun match report puts this Aussie performance into context:
It was the same lament that was heard after last week’s 29-26 loss to France, but this was a very different scenario.
Against France, Australia bumbled its way through 78 appalling error-riddled minutes and somehow managed to still be in with a chance of winning at the end. Against Ireland, they fought back from a 17-nil deficit with some scintillating play and were beaten in the end by a ruck penalty that could have gone either way.
