When the going gets tough...

GORDON D’ARCY was voted man of the match at the Millennium Stadium but Simon Easterby, one of the unsung members of the Irish pack, wasn’t too far behind.

While many of his team-mates were struggling to cope with the intensity of the Welsh challenge, Easterby was a commanding figure, something that shouldn’t perhaps come as a surprise given he knew so much about the opposition.

While fortunate to escape censure for an apparent illegal tackle on Welsh winger Chris Czekaj early in the second half, the 31 year-old brought a huge influence to bear on the outcome in a game that saw some of his more celebrated colleagues below their best.

“It was tough, there are a lot of boys with cuts and bruises”, he reported. “We’re just delighted to come out the other side with the right result. The way Wales play, it is always tough to keep them out and that was one of the big positives to come out of the game. Even at the end, we were ten points ahead and we could easily have let them in for a try.

“We put a lot of pressure on them midway through the second half and couldn’t turn that into points. But when Rog went over near the end, that settled us. We made hard work of it, but if someone had said beforehand that we would get this result, we would have taken it. There was a lot of pressure on us going into the game and our performance wasn’t where we needed it to be but we won and that’s the most important thing.”

Easterby noted how strong England and France had been on Saturday. “There are several teams who can win this tournament and we’re not going to get ahead of ourselves. While there’s a lot of work to do, there’s also a lot left in the tank. We’re making mistakes when we need to be more clinical.”

The number six attempted to be as non committal as possible when dealing with the incident involving himself and Czekaj early in the second half. He explained: “You do what you can on the spur of the moment. It’s a split-second decision. I can’t make the decision for the referee. You make your own luck and I don’t think you can call it luck after winning by ten points, scoring three tries and keeping your line intact, which is very important.” Some of this, though, was spoken with tongue in cheek.

Gordon D’Arcy arrived with an odd contraption supporting a groin injury, but he is confident of being fit to face the French. He pointed out that “I played on with it and seems to be okay.”

As for the mood in the Irish camp, D’Arcy acknowledged: “Anybody who has won in Wales knows how hard it is. Everybody is so tired and almost subdued. That’s what it takes to win here. I didn’t realise until we were coming off that we had scored three tries and it was also one of our aims to stop them scoring tries. Wales played for the full 80 minutes and that’s why we’re especially happy with the outcome.”

The Wicklow man was in no doubt as to why Ireland emerged victorious.

“It was our defence”, he insisted. “Wales spread the ball wide at every opportunity and our scrambling and willingness to get back and not let them score was a real heart on the sleeve performance by this Irish team. We’ll dissect the performance when we get home and for the most part, it was good. Brian (O’Driscoll) spoke during the week about the importance of building up momentum. We’ve said all along that if we do our job and do it well that the result will take care of itself and that’s as good a result as you could have to get the ball rolling.”

D’Arcy accepted: “100% execution wasn’t there but we’re starting to believe in our defence. We were on the back foot for such long periods we were almost surprised when we got the ball. In the second half, we calmed down and the decision makers made the right decisions then.”