Healy: Work has only just begun

Cian Healy has warned Ireland have plenty of work to do to avoid a second successive offensive bombardment when England visit the Aviva Stadium on Sunday.

Loosehead prop Healy got on the scoresheet in Cardiff on Saturday with the second try of the game as Ireland jumped out into a 30-3 lead after 42 minutes of their RBS 6 Nations opener against Wales. Ireland won the game 30-22 but not before the home side and 2012 Grand Slam winners had closed the gap with three tries of their own and Healy and company had been forced to defend their line with 14 men for the last 20 minutes following yellow cards for Rory Best and then Conor Murray.

“We let off a bit too much, it’s something we’ve been trying to work on but we’re going to have to go back and sort it out because there was too much of a let off in the second half,” Healy said.

“(Next week is a) completely different job so we’ll take tomorrow off and chill out completely, switch off from rugby and deal with it on Monday.”

Ireland captain Jamie Heaslip praised his team’s defensive effort but admitted it had taken a big physical toll.

“That last 20 minutes with 14 men, they really put it to us and asked serious questions of our defence,” Heaslip said. “There’s no better team to exploit the extra man and the space that comes with that. It’s the first time in a long while I’ve come off the field with the rest of the lads with nothing left in the tank.”

Man of the match Brian O’Driscoll described the second-half rearguard as “pretty good proper body on the line stuff”.

“There was a couple of times when guys made key decisions, stopping the ball when they had two or three men overlaps and that’s what you have to do to win tough games.

“We lost the last three to Wales and we just felt as though we needed to stop the rot and we managed to get ourselves in a good position first half. And it’s difficult when you get that defensive mentality, you invite teams onto you, and other than our last ditch tackling we might have seen a different result.

“When you’re doing 20 minutes with 14 men it’s not easy, but that’s when everyone has to ramp it up and looking for another seven or eight per cent from each person to make up for that person who’s in the bin.

“So it was a great effort from people when it did happen and you can’t let your heads drop, and we managed to fight it through.”

Head coach Declan Kidney took the unusual step of flying the team home to Ireland on Saturday night rather than the following morning as he seeks to maximise every minute of the eight-day turnaround before the England game.

“England provide a completely different challenge to Wales and we’d love to say ‘well, we’ll just take the week off and go with the same plan again’ but the same plan wouldn’t work. So we’ll just have to train a bit and be smart in what we do. This 48 hours when they do absolutely nothing is vital. They’re in their compression skins and having their rubs, just trying to get the rubbish out of their systems. They’ll eat well and give themselves every chance to get fit for Sunday.”