Madigan happy to prove credentials
And although he fully intends to build on his game-winning 15-point display, he did admit Ireland would be spending lots of time this week trying to improve on a few glaring deficiencies.
The second match of this tour takes place next Saturday with Canada hosting in Toronto and the team flew there yesterday morning to begin preparations.
“We have to be extremely critical of ourselves at the breakdown,” Madigan said after Saturday’s win.
“For Test level, it just simply wasn’t good enough. I don’t know if it was a combination of them bending the law slightly or us just not getting our timing right.”
But overall, he said, he was happy they had managed to get over the line.
“Obviously, lads were getting nervous that you might get the loss so we had to tighten up a few of our plays. Our initial gameplan would have been to keep it tight and then hope to stretch them as the game went on.”
Having heaped huge responsibility on himself beforehand, a visibly relieved Madigan was happy to have met most of his own expectations.
“I probably bigged up the pressure on myself a small bit before the game,” he said.
“I’d like to think I stepped up to it. I didn’t set the world alight by any means but a good solid game. I showed I’m not a flash-in-the-pan 10, I can do the basics to a good standard.”
Meanwhile, Ireland captain Peter O’Mahony paid tribute to the five new boys capped by their country for the first time.
Stuart Olding was impressive at inside centre while Robbie Henshaw enjoyed his first outing in spite of a couple of moments of inexperience. Coming in off the bench were the forwards Jamie Hagan, Tommy O’Donnell and Mike Sherry.
“I am thrilled to bits for the boys who won their first caps that the rest of the boys got the win on such a special day. But the overall thing is we got a win away from home, it was a tough game and we expected nothing less.
“We felt like we were in control, Mads was cool. We had an issue in the lineout, we’ll sort that this week but two of our three set-pieces were very good, our scrum and restart were very good.”
O’Mahony also reflected with a wry smile on a big hit early in the game that drew one of the biggest roars of the night from the Texas crowd.
“I got a good clatter to welcome me to the USA,” he said of the Samu Manoa tackle. “We expected nothing less.”
