No mixed emotions for Moore

WALLABY hooker Stephen Moore might have strong Irish links but he wasn’t about to deny his Australian allegiance at Croke Park yesterday.

Moore was born in Australia of Irish parents but was wearing gold on his sleeve last night as he offered words of consolation to some of the inexperienced players in the squad.

Bemoaning the fact that hopes of a rare European Grand Slam were dashed in the final moments Moore struck a defiant chord when declaring : “We can still go through unbeaten.”

“To be honest,” said Moore “I have been happier than right at this moment, but at least it wasn’t a defeat and we’re still in a position where we can go through this tour without being beaten. That’s the direction we have to take now and that’s the goal we have to aim for as we face up to these last two games (against Scotland and Wales).”

Moore admitted that mistakes ultimately cost them the spoils: “We had the better of the first-half, no doubt, but we made a lot of mistakes and that help keep them in the game.

“We will go through everything in the game; we will be happy with our scrums, our work at the rucks, but our line-out was a bit sloppy at crucial stages of the game.

“But it was probably inevitable that we wouldn’t get the kind of latitude we hoped for; Ireland are a gritty team that don’t hold back from the things that go on in the forwards; they really fought up to the end and I suppose that’s why they’re Six Nations Grand Slam champions.

“Certainly, you would have to admire them for the way they knuckled down to it, particularly in those closing minutes of the game when they began to put us under pressure.”

Moore, now a veteran of 43 Test games, could only sit back and admire the handy work of O’Driscoll, who marked his 100th Test appearance (his 94th for Ireland) with a trade-mark try to tie the game up at the death.

“When you look at O’Driscoll’s career, you just know he will pop up in those positions and will be capable of scoring tries like that; that’s what he is known for, these big moments, and he managed it yet again; it’s just a bit disappointing that it happened against us.

“We didn’t neglect to watch him; obviously he was one of the targets as well as O’Connell, but while these guys tend to carry the ball a lot we had to keep an eye our for their back row guys. They were probably the things we talked about before the game; yet I thought our back row played outstandingly well all afternoon

“You can look back and maybe say that you could have put a little less effort into that final scrum and focused on something else, but that’s not to say it would been any different.

“We will reflect on it but we need to move on; we must recognise that we played a stronger team this week than we did last (England), it was a bit of step-up for us and we didn’t lose the game so that was something.”