IRELAND CAPTAIN PETER O’Mahony said Ireland’s stunning 38-17 Six Nations victory in France stands as one of the greatest days of his career.
Friday’s meeting in Marseille was Ireland’s first outing since O’Mahony took over the captaincy from Johnny Sexton, and Andy Farrell’s side rose to the occasion with a superb performance as they powered to a five-try bonus point win at the Stade Vélodrome.
“I don’t think it gets any better really,” O’Mahony said.
With the stress of the last couple of days I’d have given the whole lot up for a win tonight.
“Away from home, first game up, Friday night, Marseille, the Vélodrome, I’d have been a happy man packing the whole lot in tomorrow morning if you’d given me the chance to take a win.”
O’Mahony’s answer prompted Ireland head coach Andy Farrell to interject during the post-match press conference:
“Are you trying to say something eh?” Farrell joked, “Are you going to pack it all in?”
“No I’m not,” O’Mahony replied. “No, it has to be right up there. I said inside it’s the biggest margin that we’ve beaten France by. I remember as a young fellah, watching Irish teams, and you’d be hoping that they’d hang on in there, whereas it’s a different animal now.”
Farrell felt the most pleasing aspect of the performance was how his players responded to the difficult moments when France began to build some momentum.
“As a team, certainly our composure because it wasn’t all singing all dancing, a French side that’s always going to pose questions and the crowd was always going to get behind them at times, but we managed to silence them quite a lot through good composure with how we played the game,” Farrell said.
“I suppose the main thing for me would have been our ability to just stay on it for the full 80 minutes and keep attacking the game.
“I think when you’re playing against 14 men for a long period, sometimes subconsciously you tend to shut up shop a little bit more, I thought our intent was pretty good and we were pretty ruthless when we needed to be, then obviously on top of that I thought our lineout in attack and defence was outstanding.”
