IN THE WAKE of Ireland’s last-gasp opening game defeat to Italy at the World Rugby U20 Championships this afternoon, full-back Jack Kelly says the team must look ahead if they stand a chance in the tournament.
Massimo Cioffi’s try and conversion three minutes from time gave Italy the narrowest of wins in Georgia but Kelly insists the team can’t dwell on the defeat too long.
“We’ve certainly made it harder on ourselves now. But it’s just about how quickly we turn our focus to the next game.
“We’ll get that game out of the way and then focus on the next two. I know bonus points will start to matter now so we just have to concentrate on getting an 80 minute performance against Scotland.”
The Leinster man says that, having failed to get the start they wanted, Ireland only played in fits and starts throughout and that was never going to be enough to get a result today.
“You can’t really win games just on patches of good play. We had concentrated on getting out there, keeping the ball in hand and building into the game but they kind of got the jump on us and we didn’t really execute our game plan well in the first half.
“The second half, we came out feeling great. We had some good shape and ran in two nice tries but, I suppose, we didn’t keep it on them long enough and we let it go down to the very last minute.”
Coach Peter Malone agreed that it was the start, rather than the last-gasp Italy try, that really put paid to Ireland’s chances.
“We let them have an early foothold in the game which is the one thing we didn’t want to do.
“We dominated possession in the opening 15-20 minutes but they got two kind of breakaway tries and that put a lot of pressure.
“I’d thought we’d done enough but, in fairness to Italy they deserved it. They got their chance in the last minute and they took it.”
Audio provided by the IRFU.
