Glass half full for battling Ireland

Ireland 16 Wales 16: Denied the joy of a victory, there was still plenty of satisfaction in Joe Schmidt’s words as he assessed an absorbing draw that left opposite number Warren Gatland considerably less enthused.

Honours between the two teams were even at the Aviva Stadium and that was perhaps as it should have been, though it was Ireland’s head coach who will have slept easier on his depleted team’s performance.

For this was not how the scriptwriters had envisaged an encounter between two sides supposedly on very different trajectories. Denied the services of several hundred Test caps worth of experience through injury and retirement, Ireland were on their uppers, their lack of strength in depth cruelly exposed by a rampant Argentina side in their most recent outing, last October’s humbling 43-20 World Cup quarter-final defeat.