Andy Farrell: Ireland must deal with revitalised Springboks

The Springboks are back with a bang and Andy Farrell believes Ireland had better learn to deal with them if they are to claim history for themselves and secure a series victory at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium today.

The defence coach, who had seen his new charges perform heroics to see out an opening Test victory with only 14 men in Cape Town a fortnight ago, watched the real South Africa finally appear in the last quarter of last week’s second Test. Allister Coetzee’s team emerged from their early season slump, woke up and found they were staring a humiliating home series defeat in the face. The result was a 20- minute bombardment of shock and awe that wrought havoc with a tiring Irish team at Ellis Park.

So heading into this evening’s series decider by the Indian Ocean, Farrell is expecting more of the same powerhouse rugby from the Springboks and has demanded his players deal with that or face a long evening getting the same bulldozer treatment they suffered last week.

“Every single game takes its own twists and turns and it isn’t just about contact. Sometimes it’s about organisation of whatever or sometimes defence is to do with the attacking game or the kicking game, etc,” Farrell said yesterday. “It could be to do with discipline.

“It wasn’t just that we fell off tackles in that last 10 or 15 minutes. It was to do with quite a lot of things merging into one and I suppose the biggest learning for us is to realise that South Africa are going to have their purple patch because they’re a very, very good international side and we’ve got to deal with the setbacks. South Africa are going to make line-breaks. They’re big dangerous runners, of course they are. Things like that are going to happen but we’ve got to respond better to those types of situations.

“How they performed in the last quarter of the second Test is probably what we expected of them through the series. I think we’d done pretty well for 140 minutes to force a few errors and nullify them. They’re going to be confident of saying that’s their game and how they will continue and it’s up to us to make sure we realise that what we’ve done for 140 minutes isn’t bad as well and take some confidence from that.”

Home captain Adriaan Strauss yesterday signalled his team’s intent, worryingly for Ireland describing their excitement to get another shot at the tourists having overturned a 19-3 half-time deficit in Johannesburg with a four-try second half that saw them claim the initiative in this series with a 32-26 victory.

“We were really hurting after the loss at Newlands‚ and we needed to get over it and we dealt with it. This is a very important test for us,” Strauss said. “I would say there is more excitement than pressure. We get another opportunity to go out there and play some rugby and we were excited about a couple of things in last week’s win and we can build on that. We need to stay in the fight for 80 minutes and it starts in the first minute.

“Last week I think we came out with a bang‚ we were good in the first couple of minutes and then‚ to their credit‚ Ireland really turned us and the momentum shifted and we could not get going. In the last couple of minutes we bounced back so it will be an 80-minute fight this time.”

Whether Ireland, in the 17th and final Test of the season, have the stamina to duke it out one last time with the Boks may well be the issue here and while head coach Joe Schmidt’s decision to rest some of the heroes of Newlands for the second Test could now be of immense benefit as they chase one more piece of history in Port Elizabeth.

It is still a monumental ask of this injury-hit squad to dig deep and beat the Springboks for the second time in three weeks and the odds once again are stacked against the Irish as they go up against an ebullient home side.