Tadhg Beirne has hailed Ireland’s ‘aura’ after their heroics against South Africa and said confidence is now so high that the team never feel like they will lose a game. Saturday’s epic victory against the defending champions in Paris leaves Ireland one win away from topping their pool, and setting up a likely quarter-final against New Zealand.
They play Scotland in Paris on Saturday week, where victory will guarantee a reunion with Joe Schmidt and the All Blacks. The camp yesterday reported no fresh injuries after a match of such intense physical demands, with Josh van der Flier suffering no ill-effects from an alleged stamp on his hand by South African prop Ox Nche in the second half.
‘When we go into the game I don’t think there’s anyone in this squad that feels like we’re going to lose,’ he said. ‘There’s just this aura within the squad where we know we can do it, we just have to deliver what we’re good at and thankfully we’ve been doing that in patches for a lot of games, and that’s got us over the line.
Johnny Sexton and Garry Ringrose, who also received treatment in-game, are also fit and ready to return to training at the end of the week, after a three-day break with their families. And in the aftermath of an astonishing Test that left the Springboks vanquished, Beirne revealed the belief in the group after they won their sixteenth consecutive Test match.
‘Going forward, in this competition it’s about making those patches bigger and bigger, and hopefully into an 80-minute performance.’ Scrum coach John Fogarty was effusive in his praise of the Irish effort when reflecting on the game yesterday, and reserved special praise for their defensive application.
‘That’s certainly an area we focused on coming into the game and we’re very pleased at the end of it.’ Especially pleasing for Farrell must have been Ireland’s success in plotting their way through a contest pitted with potentially ruinous moments, especially at set-piece time.
‘The lads feel they can bring an Irish edge to defence, that type of mentality where we’re getting off the ground, getting into position, where we’re in front of the South Africans every time, that is important for us,’ he said.
‘That was a proper game, a traditional game that had absolutely everything,’ he said.‘There were ebbs and flows, ups and downs, and how we managed to stay on point mentally, I thought, was fantastic.
‘The game was never going to be perfect.’ Dan Sheehan, meanwhile, revealed he thought his World Cup dream was over when he injured ligaments in his foot in the warm-up match against England in mid-August.
‘Yeah, when I was coming off that pitch against England, I thought I was done,’ he said in Paris. ‘They [the staff] made sure that every avenue was done and looked at to make sure I could get back, and we haven’t had any setbacks at all, so everything is going really smoothly.’
He came off the bench in the 51st minute to make his World Cup debut on Saturday night, and he will contend strongly to start against the Scots in 12 days’ time. But he credited the Irish medical and fitness staff with getting him to this point in the first place.
