In the build-up to Ireland’s Six Nations win over Wales on Saturday, it was difficult to recall a recent time when one team was favoured so heavily in this fixture.
The common theme in the pre-match commentary revolved around Ireland’s unanswerable superiority and the hiding Wales were supposedly going to get.
Ireland are a serious winning machine, after all. Wales, in contrast, are a young team in transition, not nearly as developed as a group of Irish players who have been through a lot in their five years together under Andy Farrell.
Considering all that, and the fact that Ireland were 17-0 up at half-time after a dominant first-half showing, it was striking then that Farrell found himself pinpointing his side’s resilience after they came through a sticky second half to stay on course for a second straight Grand Slam.
“Exactly that [the resilience],” observed the Ireland head coach after watching his side record an 18th straight home win.
“If we start at the end result and work our way back, I thought we were tenacious to get to that point where we won 31-7 with a bonus point.
“There was all sorts of stuff going on in that game. Some of it was our own doing but most of it was because we were playing against a tenacious Welsh side as well, so congratulations to them.
“But we stuck at it and broke them down in the end.”
Sitting pretty at half-time, Ireland allowed Wales a glimmer of hope early in the second half when Tadhg Beirne was sin-binned for illegally stopping a Welsh maul, with the visitors awarded a penalty try as a result.
That brought Wales, without a Six Nations win in Dublin since 2012, back to 17-7 down, and they applied further pressure on the Irish defence before wilting in the closing stages.
Having seen enough from his team over the 80 minutes, Warren Gatland remarked that he felt Ireland’s 24-point advantage at the end was not a fair reflection of the game.
When that was put to Farrell minutes later, his response drew laughter from those packed into the Aviva Stadium press conference room.
“It probably should have been 40, 44-7, shouldn’t it?” he said with the slightest hint of a smile.
“There were a couple of tries that were notched off, wasn’t there?”
Elaborating, Farrell said he felt Ireland “got what we deserved” and they arrived at a third successive bonus-point win thanks in no small part to their bench.
While much has been made of Gatland’s willingness to blood new players in the Test arena, it was telling that Farrell could call upon a starting British and Irish Lion number eight from 2021 (Jack Conan) and two Irish centurions (Cian Healy and Conor Murray).
“I thought it was huge,” Farrell said when asked about his bench’s impact.
“They were always going to come on and add some power. It’s the reason for the bench, to bring some power on to the field when people are a little tired.
“I think for that 10-minute spell with the [Tadhg Beirne] yellow card, they were always going to take advantage of that so it got us back on the front foot and that’s the job.”
While Farrell has lost Johnny Sexton to retirement and a few players to injury – notably Mack Hansen and Garry Ringrose – he was able to select most of his key players over the first two rounds of the championship.
But Hugo Keenan’s injury presented a headache. The livewire full-back has been two things recently: sensational and ever-present.
Farrell could have opted to give Jacob Stockdale, James Lowe or Jordan Larmour the 15 jersey, but he instead entrusted Ciaran Frawley, a player whose total previous Six Nations experience amounted to a late cameo against France.
During the week, Gatland had said Wales would look to target the Leinster man, whose first-choice position is fly-half, but Farrell was pleased with what he saw from the 26-year-old, who marked his full championship debut with a pressure-relieving try in the second half.
“Yeah, he was solid enough,” said Farrell.
“Obviously a big day for him and it was going to test him. Gatts [Gatland] was saying all week they were going to test him but his skillset is sound.
“He’s always going to be good under the high ball, he’s an extra pair of hands and eyes and communicates pretty well as well.
“He’ll be glad that that’s done and he’s going to learn a lot from that.”
With Ireland not quite firing on all cylinders, how much do they need to improve to secure wins over England and Scotland and bag a second straight Slam? Farrell isn’t sure.
“I can’t really answer that because we wanted to be better today but the opposition always has a say in that and Wales certainly did,” said the Englishman.
England may well have a say in two weeks’ time. No longer able to win the Slam themselves after losing to Scotland, Steve Borthwick’s side will be desperate to do what France, Italy and Wales couldn’t and knock Ireland down.
