FOUR DOWN, ONE to go. It just so happens the one happens to be the big one, France in Paris, with a title up for grabs.
Few expect Ireland to get it, the requirement of a bonus point victory or – at best – a healthy winning margin, likely to be step too far for Andy Farrell’s young side. Just don’t say that to Andrew Porter.
The tight-head is full of belief after Ireland’s 50-17 victory today, confident Ireland can pull off a title triumph in the Stade de France.
“Today it was strange not having the support of your home crowd, the noise and the energy that comes with that,” Porter said, “but we’ve tried as a team to build our own energy without the fans.
“The fact is that we knew they’d be watching at home, so we were really looking to put in a big performance to hopefully give people something to get excited about in these trying times. And I think we overcame that bit of adversity in terms of what’s going on outside of this. For us, this was all about giving people at home something to look at and take their minds off the crazy things that are happening.”
Nice words, well expressed. It’s becoming a theme of the Farrell era, the coach asking his players to come out of their shells. “When you have the amount of talent and skilled players that we have, lads coming together from all difference provinces, you want guys to express themselves and not just go inside themselves just because it’s a different team environment,” said Porter.
He (Farrell) wants us to be the same as we are at home while we’re in camp, so I think that’s really been great for lads, getting their playing confidence up as well as getting to know each other off the pitch too. We have done that really well.”
Four other people who did really well today were the men on debut, Ed Byrne, Jamison Gibson-Park, Hugo Keenan and man-of-the-match, Will Connors.
“It’s been great to share that journey with them, and I’m sure they’ll have many other days like today, where they are able to put on the green jersey. It was a huge honour to share the field with them. They played out of their skins today, so we’ll see them again soon I’d say.”
That’ll be next Saturday, when the French will test Porter and hope to have a similar level of success against him that Saracens had in the Champions Cup last month.
“We will take great confidence out of what happened today, we know what the French pack can do and how strong they can be. So we’ll really push forward for next week and aim for a really big performance in Paris.”
