INTERNATIONAL RULES MATCH REACTION:IRELAND MANAGER Anthony Tohill's combined air of relief and incomprehension brought to mind someone leaving Lourdes with an ailment cured. After a seriously poor display by his team for all but five minutes of Saturday's first Test in Limerick, the home team had been rescued from oblivion.
Bernard Brogan’s goal in the 62nd minute kick started a revival that just about – and even then, predominantly in the breasts of the optimistic – keeps hopes of a home victory alive going into next week’s second Test in Croke Park.
“It might just have saved the series,” said Tohill at the post-match media conference in the Gaelic Grounds. “I think if we had not got it, we were in a pretty bad position. We really needed that goal because we were about 20 points down at the time playing not the way we wanted to be playing, to put it mildly.
“The goal brought us into it and brought the crowd into it and it led to us getting a bit of a strong run at the end of the game.”
Up until then Australia had been doing all the strong running and had incrementally been pulling away into the distance, using the, for them, unfamiliar round ball as briskly and effectively as Ireland had been tentative and wayward.
What went wrong? “How long have you got,” sighed the manager. “We seemed to be very nervous and jittery in possession and we made a lot more mistakes than we would have liked to have made. It took us a long time to find our feet in the game.
“Australia, the way they play as a 14-man unit, they defended all together, they attacked all together. From watching that game, they had numbers on us. We were out-numbered in a lot of contests and they work the ball well in the scoring zone and that was what we were trying to do as well. We were trying to get the ball into the scoring zone and make marks in there.
“If you look at it, we had 19 scores, they had 19 scores, 10 of those were behinds and we would have expected a higher return from our forwards so it is an area that we have to try and work on.
“I think there was a lack of composure. We created enough scoring opportunities, as many as they did but they were more efficient. There was a fair bit of pressure out there but maybe we should have been a little bit more composed and no doubt the experience of playing here tonight will stand to us.”
Team captain Steven McDonnell was equally subdued as he tried to identify what had gone wrong and why an Irish attack that had looked promising on paper had struggled so much to make meaningful incisions into opposition territory.
“To be honest, we were very jittery and nervous at times and the ball was spilling a lot. A lot of it had to do with the conditions out there tonight. It was a very slippy surface and a lot of our ball-handling was not as good as what it should have been so the ball was spilling onto the ground. We are more comfortable with the ball in our hands and we would be hoping next weekend that is the way we play.”
Reflecting on the task ahead in the second Test, Tohill was forced into alien territory: talking up his team’s prospects a little bit.
“We have a good feel now for what it is about,” he said, “and we would like to think anyway that we will improve immensely before next week.” Exhausted by the Dr Good Vibes role play, he added: “We need to.”
