D’Arcy: Irish rugby is in a good place

Gordon D’Arcy hailed Irish head coach Declan Kidney and his management team for a “bang-on game plan” to see off Argentina.

Saturday was payback time, he said, for Kidney’s attention to detail throughout the autumn series.

“We have the utmost respect for him; we backed the game-plan with him, it was bang on in all three matches. We just didn’t execute it properly in the second-half against South Africa but we showed just what is there if we can get it right.

The 32-year-old D’Arcy figures new available talent indicates Irish rugby is in a good place: “I think you can see a definitive Irish way of playing that’s kind of different from all the provinces, but taking the positives from all the provinces. The management have done a really good job in basing a game-plan around the strengths of the players.

“When you’re playing well, you want to keep playing. You’d love to play the second 40 minutes against South Africa again. It’s the smarts in the game, the rugby smarts as Les Kiss calls them. We got great tries here but the pressure we put them under was fantastic. Every time they tried to play out, we had something ready for them. You could see them creaking.

“We were really positive in executing the plan and the scrum and the tight five were superb. They’re shattered after the effort, but when they win that type of ball for you, it makes rugby an awful lot simpler. The best teams in the world take their lineout and scrum for granted so they can get the ball on the front foot. I take my hat off to them.

“It’s a very Irish thing not to tell people when they do stuff well. I was the first one over to those guys. I’ve huge admiration for what they did, unsung heroes like Mike McCarthy, and Donnacha Ryan, it was great to see another second-row getting the man of the match award.”

Craig Gilroy received a lot of plaudits from his colleagues for his debut performance but played down the importance of the try other than being relieved it wasn’t seen as a fluke.

“I didn’t want people to think it was just a fluke against Fiji. The drive to the stadium, the whole day was amazing including the anthems. If I had to say one aspect, it was probably just the feeling after I scored. I’ll never forget that.”