O’Gara irritated by defensive slip-ups and ‘suicidal passing’

HE had another fine day with the boot — six successful kicks from seven for a total haul of 15 points — yet Ronan O’Gara wasn’t exactly jumping out of his skin with excitement: “It was looking hairy there for a while,” he admitted, “But we managed to regroup. The scores we gave away were disappointing; it was nothing they did, really, it was down to our errors.

“To gift them 21 points, that’s disappointing, left us a bit of work to do. We mixed the very good with the very bad. Tough finish, but I didn’t think we were going to lose the game at any stage. I was probably a bit more confident than ye were, though it felt on the pitch that we were holding a small bit back; it’s disappointing to have to say that, but anytime they came back to us we raised it again and got a score ourselves.

“We should have got a score there at the end for the bonus point, that was frustrating. The thing about this team is we never make things easy for ourselves, do we? It was a great pitch out there, great conditions. We’re trying to develop our game, make it a 15-man game, and at times it looked good, at times it looked terrible. We must rule out those errors — some suicidal passing going on, I don’t know where that’s coming from.”