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O'Mahony talks to his team-mates. Dan Sheridan/INPHO
second chances

'Frustrated and upset' Ireland look to bounce back in second Test

Peter O’Mahony says his team-mates are looking for an improved performance.

PETER O’MAHONY says that Ireland are determined to bounce back to winning ways in Ireland’s second Test with the Wallabies tomorrow morning.

Australia’s 18-9 victory last weekend was a first Test defeat since the 2017 Six Nations for Ireland and the stand-in captain says that players are determined to make amends in Melbourne.

“Fellas are frustrated and upset, it was a record we wanted to hold on to,” the Munster man said after his captain’s run.

“But we’re a team that understands that when something like that happens we have got to improve.

“It was up to us to have a good look at the game and see what areas we need to improve on.

We understand that we were beaten by a better team last Saturday and we’re going to have to put in a performance that has been better than any we’ve put in over the last 18 months to beat this Australia team.

“The quality they have in their game-plan, they’re one of the best teams in the world and have to up our game from the standards we set in the Six Nations, which we certainly didn’t do last week.”

However, the 28-year-old is under no illusions that the hosts are equally capable of raising their game to another level in the second Test.

“They’re one of the best teams in the world and every time you go out you want to better your last performance.

“They’ve had another week now to gel together, to build on it and we’ve no doubt that they’ll be better than last week which is something that we have to prepare for and deal with.”

O’Mahony, however, is keen to stress that he’ll be looking for an improved performance from his team-mates, rather than focusing on the results.

“It’s not that we’re saying we want to finish the season with this or that. We want to better our performance every week and that’s what we’ve been focusing on.

We knew our performance wasn’t up to scratch last week, we’d a good look at the areas we need to improve on and there was quite a few, which hasn’t happened us in a while.

“But we’ve taken those learnings, tried to work on them during the week and hopefully that pays off on the weekend.”

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