ANDY FARRELL has said there are no excuses for his side’s below-par performance against New Zealand.
Ireland suffered their first home defeat in 20 games – since France beat them in the 2021 Six Nations – at the Aviva Stadium on Friday night.
2
Ireland coach Andy Farrell made no excuses for his side’s under par performance in the defeat to New Zealand
2
Ireland suffered their first home defeat in 20 games at Aviva Stadium on Friday
And Farrell refused to accept that their disappointing display could be explained by being their first match in five months whereas the All Blacks have been far more active.
He said: “It’s easy to say it but it’s probably just an excuse.
“We’ve always prided ourselves getting up to speed and being as good as we possibly can be first game up because that’s the card we’re dealt with in the Northern Hemisphere.
“I’ve said to you before that it doesn’t matter if you’ve had three training sessions, 12 minutes of rugby, or seven consecutive games and 50 training sessions.
“People still expect you to be at your best and unfortunately we weren’t.
“There was a little bit of overplaying too much. In those conditions as well, quality of pass is something that wasn’t where it needed to be to be accurate. So there are some good learnings there.
“It’s a tough old month, four games back to back on the trot, so we’ll see what the energy levels are like.
“Obviously we’ve got a few guys who put in a good shift in consideration with training time never mind game time, so we’ll see how bodies are and how people dust themselves down.
We’ll see what the feeling’s like and act accordingly.”
Farrell admitted that his side had dodged a bullet by being only three points behind at the break but insisted he did not deliver a rocket in the dressing room.
He said: “No, I didn’t. You pick and choose your moments.
“There was a few things to fix so getting those points over about how to get ourselves back in the game and giving them an understanding of why they were feeling like they were feeling was important.
“The reset at half time probably came at the right time for us to be able to address a few things and I thought we came out of the blocks in a different manner anyway.”
Jack Crowley was taken off just 17 minutes into the second half at which stage Ireland were still leading but replacement Ciaran Frawley made a series of errors.
He said: “It was just to freshen it up, give Frawls a chance. Sometimes it goes your way, sometimes it doesn’t.”
Asked to assess both out-halves, he said: “I suppose it was like the team’s performance, everyone’s a little bit down in the changing room because we could have, should have done better.”