'We dug ourselves out' — Easterby praises Irish resilience after crowning Cardiff comeback

'We would have certainly taken this a few weeks back,' insisted the interim Ireland coach as Triple Crown is secured with a gritty win over resurgent Wales after Garry Ringrose had seen red

Sat, 22 Feb, 2025 - 18:07

Simon Lewis, Cardiff

Simon Easterby praised Ireland’s ability to dig themselves out of a hole as they came from behind to beat Wales 27-18 at Principality Stadium on Saturday to keep their Guinness Six Nations Grand Slam bid alive heading into the final two games.

Ireland were trailing 18-10 after Wales wing Tom Rogers scored his country’s second try in a six-minute spell either side of half-time before full-back Jamie Osborne’s 55th-minute try and three nerveless penalties from fly-half Sam Prendergast saw Ireland home to their third win in a row in 2025 to deliver a Triple Crown and consign a brave Welsh side to 12th-consecutive Test defeat.

Jack Conan’s seventh-minute converted try and a Prendergast penalty had put Ireland into an early 10-minute lead before two Gareth Anscombe penalties and a converted try from captain Jac Morgan saw the Welsh storm back to lead 13-10 at the half-time break. Ireland wobbled following Garry Ringrose’s sin-binning for a high hit on opposing centre Ben Thomas that would be upgraded under bunker review to a 20-minute red card.

It was a rollercoaster performance from the Irish in a fiercely contested game against a side re-energised under new interim head coach Matt Sherratt, who had had just four training sessions with his squad following Warren Gatland’s departure the previous week.

“Pleased with the result but [there's] lots of things in the game that we feel we could have done better,” Ireland’s interim boss Easterby said. “We go down in the game, we go down a man and then we go down on the scoreboard. We came in at half-time and felt like if we played in the right way and did things better our way then we felt we could dominate them.

“We had a lot of possession and territory for 30 minutes, just didn't quite get our accuracy right in terms of scoring the points that we needed.

“We knew that Wales would come back into it if we gave them an opportunity and we did that. I was pleased that we responded to being in a big of a hole and we dug ourselves out and took the game away from them in the last 20.”

Following an opening home bonus-point win over England on February 1 and away wins over Scotland, with a try bonus point, and now Wales, Ireland next face France in Dublin before a St Patrick’s weekend finale against Italy in Rome. With 14 points from a possible 15 they will go into round four at the top of the championship table, regardless of the weekend’s other results, and as the only team still capable of completing a Grand Slam.

“We would have certainly taken this a few weeks back,” Easterby said. “The mark of this group, the players in particular, they always want to get better and keep striving to chase down things which maybe other teams can't do.

“That's going to continue to drive the team over the next few weeks towards France. Getting a result today in very different circumstances to when we played Scotland and the home game against England means we keep building the experiences and driving the mentality to do things really well our way. That was evident today in different circumstances.”

Ireland’s bench made a huge impact in turning the game back in their favour with Bundee Aki and James Ryan in particular earning the praise of first-time captain for the day Dan Sheehan while Easterby focused on Aki’s introduction on 51 minutes to end the 20-minute red-card period and restore his side to its full complement.

“It was good, very good. Having someone like Bundee on the bench with his physicality, he brings a lot of energy to the group," he added. “We felt it was a good opportunity to change it up again and play Garry and Robbie but we knew Bundee would come on at some point to impact the game but he was brilliant on both sides of the ball.

“Great energy, good leadership and he won some crucial turnovers at times.I guess part of the squad and the rotation and how you build a squad is you've got guys who understand they have as important a job as the guys who start. Bundee showed that today.”

On the head to head contact made by Ringrose on Welsh inside centre Ben Thomas that will probably see the Ireland centre miss the French game in two weeks and possibly the trip to Rome, Easterby said: “Those can go either way.

“Ringer's a great player for us, everything he does is with intent, in terms of the speed he works at. That's probably what cost him there, the speed of his movement off the line and he just doesn't quite drop enough.

“He's certainly far from a dirty player, it's just one of those things, it could have gone either way. It could have been a yellow. There was another incident late in the game that could have gone either way. It didn't fall in our favour, these things happen.

“I was pleased with how the lads responded to that, even though we conceded at the end of the first half we found our way back into the game when we were down and man and Bundee coming on made a huge impact.

“When we were up to 15 on 15 we took the game away from them a little bit.”