Strauss: We must build on Argentina performance

Ireland secured a top eight position in the IRB World Rankings ahead of the 2015 World Cup pool allocation draw with an emphatic 46-24 victory over Argentina and hooker Richardt Strauss is confident it won’t be a one-off performance.

Five consecutive Test match defeats, prior to Saturday's win, marked Ireland’s worst run of form in fourteen years and intensified the pressure on head coach Declan Kidney whose contract expires in June.

Those results also saw Ireland fall to seven on the IRB World Rankings list and another defeat on Saturday would have forced Ireland out of the top eight ensuring a difficult pool draw for the 2015 World Cup.

But Kidney’s charges silenced their critics with a seven-try dismissal of the Pumas who showed signs of fatigue in what was their last Test at the end of their longest ever season.

Having made his first cap for Ireland in the defeat to his native South Africa, Strauss enjoyed a better afternoon on his second appearance in a green shirt, crossing for his first international try on twenty-two minutes.

Pleased as the team are with the result, the Leinster hooker insists the squad must carry the momentum from that victory forward into their next game.

“Obviously we’re very pleased with the result that we got up here and hopefully we can keep building on that performance,” he said.

“We said in the changing room after that it’s not just a one time performance and it’s something that we have to keep on working on and hopefully we can take it on to the next few games.”

The big number 2 was eager to deflect praise for his try towards his teammates, claiming he simply finished off a well constructed maul on the Pumas’ try line.

“I didn’t too much work so I can’t take all the credit, the lads did pretty well with setting up the maul and I was just lucky to be at the back of it.

“I just saw their nine coming into the maul and saw a bit of space and hoped that I would get there and was lucky enough to get there.”

Debutant Craig Gilroy also got his name on the score sheet with the game’s first try while Tommy Bowe and Jonathan Sexton picked up a brace of tries each with Simon Zebo securing the other five-pointer.

Strauss doesn’t subscribe to the view that Ireland were helped by shaky Argentinian defence, suggesting that the pressure his teammates applied forced the Pumas to make mistakes.

“We did what we said we wanted to do during the week.

“At patches we got a bit loose and they put us under pressure and it was important for us to get back into what we wanted to do and obviously we’re very pleased with the tries we scored.

“I think we did well at running hard and direct at them and that was one of our plans.

“To get any momentum off them, to get their defence turned around we were going to have to run hard at them and if you look at patches where we started throwing the ball around when it wasn’t on they put us under pressure and their defence was pretty good so I think the lads did well to put them under pressure and make them make mistakes.”

Strauss qualifies for Ireland having completed his three year residency and the absence of Ulster man Rory Best saw him drafted straight into the starting XV but the Leinster man knows he will have to keep his performance levels high if he wants to be part of Ireland’s Six Nations squad.

“I’m very excited about that. There’s a lot of hard work that has to go in for me to be in that squad.

“That’s why everyone has got to go back to the provinces and perform and hopefully get into that squad.”