Joe Schmidt encouraged with performance if not the draw

A draw leaves room for everything, most of it equivocation. You can jostle for position, call it a good draw or a bad draw but in the end, it amounts to nothing. Nobody came for a draw so nobody is leaving satisfied, least of all the managers.

"I feel encouraged by the performance," said Joe Schmidt afterwards. "Much as you're always disappointed not to get the result, I thought the performance was good. The players worked hard during the week to be as well-prepared as they could be and I think there was real evidence of that in the first 30 minutes.

“We got down into the Welsh 22 for 13 points and it was the sort of springboard we needed against what was an incredibly strong squad. We knew they would bring experience off the bench as the game went on. And we also had the breeze in the first half.

“At the other end of the pitch, I felt we defended really well in those first 30 minutes. We didn’t really allow them the opportunity to get anything concrete in their visits to our 22. So that was the really heartening part of the performance.

“But as soon as you tackle and those legs get above the horizontal, you’re on danger of giving away that penalty and that’s what happened. That gave them a little bit of access to our 22 and they kicked the penalty. And then I thought Jon Davies’ little grubber down out touchline put them in a position where they had us under pressure. It’s very hard to control these scrums as they go across to the left. It just meant that once they got us in that position, it was hard to get out and they got their try.

“For the second half, they had the wind, they had the possession and at the end of the game to come back from 13-16 down and get those last three points probably makes it feel a bit better than a draw normally would be.”

The customary body-count on days like this is high. Tommy O'Donnell was led off by the elbow in the second half, not to return. Keith Earls found himself at the bottom of a pile, Johnny Sexton clutched at his sternum as he walked off near the end. Just another day at the office.

"Tommy O'Donnell passed his HIA and has no ill effects," said Schmidt. "He could have returned to play but by that time, Rhys Ruddock had taken the pitch and had slotted in and was comfortable.

“ It was a change that we were probably going to make anyway so we thought we would leave it at that. Keith Earls has probably suffered a concussion. At this stage, I don’t know the full story. I think he passed his HIA but he may have staggered and therefore he would be considered to have had a concusssive impact and that would certainly put him in doubt for next weekend.

"Johnny is sore without a doubt. But i was just talking to Jon Davies in the corridor and he's sore too. I think that's something that's pretty contagious after a Wales v Ireland game, especially when the ball is in play for as long as it was.

"Jamie Roberts didn't help that, throwing himself at our gainline as often as he did. I thought there were some brillinat Wales performances and it probably gives us a bit of confidence that we managed to hang in there."

From the floor, Schmidt was told that no team had ever won the Six Nations after drawing a game. Was he worried by such a statistic?

“It’s one of a number of worrying things that we’ve got to overcome. Statistics won’t affect our recovery and it won’t affect our preparation for France. But to have a six-day tournaround and to have to go to France with the athletes they have is going to be a monumental task. I can see why that stat exists because this is such a competitve competition. Particularly when you have a six-day turnaround and you’ve got to compete with another really good team, it’s really tough.”

For Wales, Warren Gatland was equally non-plussed with how the day shook out. A draw means no Triple Crown, no Grand Slam and neither shape nor make on how the championship might take shape from here. The cold facts of it say that Wales led inside the closing five minutes but didn't get it done. Hard to spin a positive out of that.

“I think on reflection, we didn’t start well in the first 20 minutes,” said Gatland.

“We got ourselves back into the game and played well, dominated possession and got in front. Obviously, to not execute an exit play at the end was disappointing.

“So we’re disappointed with how we started but good sides are able to get back in the game and we did that. We possibly could have come away with the win but I wouldn’t take anything from Ireland. They contributed as well and maybe a draw was a fair reflection of the game.

“We tried to play a bit of rugby in the conditions, which was difficult. It wasn’t the easiest thing to do but I thought both teams tried to play a bit of rugby even with the rain coming down. Keeping hold of the ball was difficult but I thought there was a lot less kicking in the game than people might have expected. I thought we were both reasonably positive in trying to move the ball.

"We talked about things in terms of how they were going to play us, a lot of one-off runners off Conor Murray. We said beforehand to that they could potentially stand off us on the line-out and engage then and they did that early on. So a lot of the things they threw at us were what we prepared for.

“They just started better than us. Emotionally they were better than we were starting off in those opening 20 minutes. We gave away some soft penalties early on and we gave away Conor Murray’s try. But I think we showed some character in coming back.”