Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
NOW WE AGAIN
Ireland No.8 Jack warns his heroic team-mates winning can make you soft...and the only option is to repeat the effort that downed All Blacks
29
New Zealand 20
BY
DON’T believe the hype – that’s Jack Conan’s warning to his Ireland team-mates in the wake of their superb takedown of the All Blacks.
Conan was one of seven players who faced New Zealand for the first time on Saturday.
But what happened after Ireland’s last searing display against the Kiwis in Dublin is on the minds of Andy Farrell’s charges now.
Beating the All Blacks in November 2018 was the peak moment in a Grand Slam-winning year that ended with Ireland named the top team in world rugby.
But the following October, their World Cup dreams turned to dust as New Zealand stormed to a facile quarter-final victory.
Just as try scorer James Lowe vowed after the nine-point win that there will be no “backward step” from the team, Conan insists there can be no let-up.
“People always say, ‘Winning makes you soft.’ It does,” the No.8 said. “Sometimes it can paper over the cracks. You think, ‘Oh yeah, we won, we had a great performance’.
“But we left loads of points out there. Some of our lineout stuff wasn’t great or we missed bullets and barrels in rucks that we should have got, things like that. I suppose for us, it’s about not believing the hype. Yeah, we are a good side but we are not as good as what people are saying.
“We need to be better. We need to go and look harder at ourselves and work harder on the basics to be better.
“You can’t let winning make you soft. You can’t think because we rocked up and went really well the same is going to happen next week.”
That is the consistency Farrell is looking for and that he is now getting.
Saturday’s deserved victory was Ireland’s seventh in a row, going back to the Six Nations win over Italy in February and following back-to-back losses against Wales and France.
Up to that point there were only flashes of what the head coach was trying to implement in his side’s play. But it is coming out more and more now and the All Blacks couldn’t sufficiently respond to a three-try salvo that in reality could have been five or six.
Conan said: “We spoke about it on Thursday night. Johnny Sexton said, ‘This is a chance to write your name into Irish history, into rugby history, to be one of the few people that have ever beaten the All Blacks’.
“Long after all of us hang up the boots, that memory and that legacy will bond us. It’s something when you’re 60 or 70 that you can tell your grandkids about. That’s why we do it.
“The atmosphere, I have never ever experienced something like that. From the anthems to when Caelan Doris scores that try to Tadhg Beirne making that turnover right at the end.
“The noise, you feel the crowd, it was like they were standing on the pitch. It was the greatest experience, atmosphere-wise, I have ever been a part of. It was absolutely incredible – it made the hairs on your neck stand up, it was class.
“The crowd was there for 80 minutes. You heard them throughout. It gives you such a lift, energy. You live off that. You get bigger, you get stronger, you are more defiant.”