IT’S HARD TO know where to start. Joe Schmidt’s insistence on leaving the Principality Stadium roof open despite the downpours forecast for Cardiff not only spectacularly backfired, but would have made this Welsh victory that bit sweeter.
It forced Ireland’s head coach to eat humble pie in the aftermath of his side’s humiliation, as Ireland — out-played, out-fought and annihilated on the final weekend of the championship — watched on as Wales lifted the Six Nations trophy they had made their own 12 months previous.
As the Ireland players stood in the Cardiff rain, reflecting on where it all went wrong, it would be irresponsible to solely put Ireland’s woeful performance down to the conditions and greasy ball, because there were so many more concerns elements to it.
Chiefly, the visitors were horribly ill-disciplined and ragged, committing error after error, which added to the frustration of Sexton and co, much to the amusement of the home crowd.
On the back of this, Ireland are no longer ranked second in the world, with Wales jumping ahead of Schmidt’s side in the world rankings, and Rob Kearney admits the players are expecting a backlash.
“Pretty disappointing,” he said, when asked for his assessment. “They played pretty well, to be fair to them. Their defence is very good. Discipline was quite poor and they just kept the scoreboard ticking along nicely. All of a sudden, we had a big old mountain to climb.
“I think handling errors, the conditions have a huge amount to do with it. Kicking errors, yeah it was a little bit breezy out there but they put us under a fair bit of pressure too.
“I’m sure there will be [a backlash]. You know, there was a huge backlash after the England game. There was a little bit of a backlash after the Italian game, albeit we had won with a bonus point. Hadn’t played particularly well.
“I’m sure there will be lots said about us as players and as a team over the coming weeks. But that’s part of being professional athletes as well. We just need to come together, close rank a little bit and never lose focus on how good we are as players, and as a team.”
Kearney, who returned to the side after missing last week’s win over France, insisted that Ireland must not forget about their achievements last year and use the disappointment of today to come back stronger for the World Cup in September.
He continued: “You know we had this incredible year last year. After every game, we always said, ‘Listen, the margins are small. The margins are small’. We’ve done really well to win, and then this year we have come out the other side of that.
“Now, albeit the manner in some of the games, you can’t say that the margins are small because, you know, there have been a couple of heavy enough defeats. But, you know, we still have a huge amount of confidence in how we are as a team, in terms of what we can achieve as team. We just need to be realistic that there’s lots of other really good teams out there too.
“You have to bank all these tough days. There’s no doubt about it, today was a tough day. It was tough watching one of your competing nations lift trophies. So, that is a memory, it’s a picture that will live with all of us for a long time over the next few months, and it will be brewing away.
“We just need to make sure we can use days like today to our advantage.”
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