No excuses needed. No spindoctoring exercises required from the Irish management. World Cup platforms are made of such victories and that was in the mind of Warren Gatland after the lethargic win against Connacht last week. Relief was evident in the Irish camp.

"We played well for the first 50 or 60 minutes and then they came back into it. But we hung in and I'm pretty happy with the win," said Gatland.

"You can expect a team to come back at you. It's our first Test match of the season, the first game of that level and we lacked a bit of match practice. You would have expected us to be rusty after training for three weeks. Maybe the players were a bit heavy in the legs. We've been training very hard now and perhaps that took its toll.

"Also with one eye on the preparation for the World Cup and one eye on the match, I thought that showed. It would have been nice to sit back in Lansdowne Road but yeah, the old heart was thumping for the last 15 minutes."

In the light of what is an important victory for team morale it was also a day for reflecting on the positive aspects of the Irish game and Gatland was obliging. "I thought we were accurate in the first half," he said. "We shut down space and they didn't look like they could get anywhere. When we looked to move the ball and get it wide, we looked dangerous."

While left wing Matt Mostyn made that evident with his three tries, Gatland also looked to his scrum to set the tone and settle the team.

"If we are mentally prepared our scrum is strong. We felt that if we worked hard on that aspect then we could put them under pressure. We are confident our scrum is very strong and hopefully will be that way for the World Cup as well."

Argentina's pragmatic former All Black coach Alex Wyllie also looked to Ireland's front row as a position of strength. "There were two strong front rows out there. I was told by one of our guys who plays in England that Ireland have a good front row. But you just can't afford to let any international team to get away with that lead. Could we have won it? Yeh, if we'd another half an hour!"

Argentina's captain Lisandro Arbizu preferred to look at his own side's frailties rather than anything outstanding from the Irish. "We made a lot of mistakes," he said. "Especially in our discipline and in turn overs."

"Overall it was a good win," said Irish captain Dion O'Cuinneagain. "It's the first win in a while and it was good to get in a good hard game before the World Cup. The win is what counted." Mostyn was also confident that Ireland would get better before next month.

"They went up a gear," he said "But we knew they'd do that in the second half. We worked really hard in the first half and that's the way we will play for the whole game in the World Cup."