IT’S BEEN A whirlwind few weeks for Jack McGrath.
The Leinster prop won his first international cap as man of the match against Samoa before suffering at the hands of the Wallabies scrum in a 12-minute cameo on Saturday.
Ireland’s set piece collapsed late on against Ewen McKenzie’s men, and while the blame cannot be placed on McGrath’s hefty shoulders, the 24-year-old says his pride was damaged.
And yet, McGrath’s confidence is intact. He is smart enough to realise that a couple of poor scrums don’t make him a bad player and is instead focused on the next challenge, namely the “very experienced, very powerful” All Blacks. The possibility of starting against the best team in the world is something that fills McGrath with excitement rather than fear.
“I suppose the lads around me would give me big confidence as well. The game two weeks ago was great confidence for me, so yeah, I would be confident [against the All Blacks]. You have to be confident in your own competence to be able to play at this level.
“I think between myself, Cian [Healy] and Tom [Court], there’s always a chance of any one of us starting. The team hasn’t been announced yet, so we’re still fighting for our places.”
Ireland’s pack were bullied by the Wallabies last time out, but McGrath refutes the suggestion that there was a lack of aggression at the root of Ireland’s problems. He does admit that there is a need to strip the game plan down to something more straightforward against the All Blacks, but says motivation wasn’t an issue against Australia.
“I don’t think so. I think we were very close a few times in their 22, a couple of balls didn’t go to hand. I don’t think it was ever a case of aggression, I think a couple of balls just went down and there were a few mistakes here and there. That kind of killed our momentum.
We are problem solvers, we had a look at it last night and there’s a couple of tweaking things ourselves that we did as a front five and an eight. Things went wrong on Saturday, these things happen. The only way we can do it is by correcting it during the week.”
The evidence of those tweaks remain to be seen, but it is certain that Ireland need huge improvement in several areas if they are to beat the All Blacks. Despite having been involved in one of Ireland’s poorer displays in recent memory, McGrath says he is gaining huge amounts of knowledge from his first international series.
“I’m really enjoying it, it’s a great experience for me. It’s given me great confidence, they’re a great bunch of lads. Hopefully I can get a run out this weekend, starting or on the bench. No matter what happens, I’ll help whoever is involved.”
