Irish skipper Paul O’Connell last night stood squarely behind shattered flanker Stephen Ferris, whose last-minute penalty concession gave Wales victory at the Aviva Stadium.
As Ireland reflected on what might have been, O’Connell insisted it was a team failing that cost Ireland.
"I don’t think it was the winning or losing of the game," he said.
"I missed a tackle myself for their try late in the game and we probably gave them a lot of ball early in the game that we shouldn’t have.
"If you’re going to leave it come down to one decision (and) pick out one player, then you’re not operating as a team, so it was disappointing. We put ourselves in a position to win the game and we conceded eight points in that last five minutes; that’s what won them the game, not that one incident at the end."
O’Connell accepted the general view that Wales had been given too much latitude: "Yes, we conceded a lot of momentum in the first-half and gave them a lot of self belief, we probably didn’t defend with our heads up as we should.
"Our scramble defence was really good but we got caught on the short side once or twice. They carried hard at us in the wide channels. We just got caught and allowed them get momentum against us and we struggled to get into the game in the first half.
"It took us a good while to get a foothold in their territory to start playing ball ourselves. When we did we scored a good try but you can’t do that, you can’t give a team that amount of time with ball in hand because it puts you under too much pressure."
He conceded there is much work to be done in the coming days but thinks Ireland will be looking forward to tackling World Cup finalists France.
"Whatever about conceding scores, we conceded a lot of ground and yardage at times," he said.
"There were good things as well like our scramble defence — when we attacked and played with intensity with ball in hand we created some good opportunities and scored good tries.
"In terms of six-day turnarounds there is plenty of experience, guys do it regularly week-in, week-out with provinces, so that shouldn’t be an issue. Obviously international rugby is different, it’s a higher level, but we’ll recover and guys will really be looking forward to the game."
Ireland would, he noted, have to bring a structure to that game and cut down on individual and collective errors, having watched what the French did to gritty Italy on Saturday.
"You look at the game and you’ll note that France are great at taking opportunities; that’s what they’ve always done well. It’s something we will have to stop, conceding tries and scores of any description that we don’t need to.
"When we consider today, there were times when we defended really well but then finished it off by conceding penalties once or twice when we really didn’t need to, when we appeared to be defending quite comfortably.
"A lot of it [concession of penalties] is down to interpretation but we still need to be a bit more patient. At times we defended really well, but we need to keep that patience, we need to get a bit more width in the defence which should allow us to get more line speed."
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, February 06, 2012
