Proud Farrell hails his Irish history boys
Series glory in New Zealand is ‘hardest thing in rugby’
ANDY FARRELL hailed the proudest achievement of his career after his Ireland team accomplished the ‘hardest thing you can do in rugby by a country mile’ with a seriesclinching win in New Zealand.
Farrell’s men opened up a 19-point lead in Wellington during a near faultless first-half but then had to hold off a ferocious All Blacks fightback.
However, Rob Herring’s score after the New Zealanders had run in three tries in 20 minutes, settled Irish nerves and secured a historic 2-1 series win.
The extraordinary victory condemned New Zealand to their first back-to-back home defeats in 24 years. Ireland had previously won only three southern hemisphere series, in Australia in 1979 and 2018, and in Argentina in 2014.
‘It’s a special day, isn’t it?,’ said Farrell. ‘A special day for everyone back home, for everyone that’s involved in Irish rugby, for everyone that’s Irish, this is pretty special. I can’t speak highly enough of these boys. They keep surprising me, they keep turning up and 100 per cent believed in themselves.’
Tries from Leinster trio
Josh van der Flier, Hugo Keenan and Robbie Henshaw had helped the tourists build up what looked an unassailable lead. But Ardie Savea, Akira Ioane and Will Jordan all crossed before Herring restored Ireland’s cushion.
Former dual-code international Farrell was left beaming by a result which moved Ireland to the top of the world rankings. There had been optimism before the series that Ireland were capable of making history in New Zealand and it will give them a huge lift just over a year before the World Cup.
‘The achievement is not mine, it’s the players’,’ said Farrell. ‘Some of the stuff they’ve done out there today, we’ve done it together so when you look at it like that it’s the most proud that I’ve ever been part of a group, without a shadow of a doubt.
‘This is the hardest thing you can do in rugby by a country mile, especially when you take it down to the last game and we know from history that the All Blacks are going to come out firing.’
Farrell became the first visiting coach to orchestrate tour success over New Zealand since France prevailed 2-0 in 1994.
Ireland had never won away to the three-time world champions before last weekend’s milestone 23-12 victory in Dunedin cancelled out a 42-19 drubbing in the Auckland opener to set up the tantalising climax.
The Irish flew out of the blocks to take control before digging in to weather a second-half storm intensified by Andrew Porter’s spell in the sin bin for a head clash which left Kiwi lock Brodie Retallick with a broken cheekbone.
Irish flanker Peter O’Mahony wept tears of joy at full-time following arguably his nation’s greatest result. Captain Johnny Sexton once again led by example and, in the week he turned 37, celebrated another personal milestone.
The influential fly-half contributed 12 points to become only the second man, after Ronan O’Gara, to reach 1,000 in the green jersey.
‘It doesn’t get much better than this,’ said Sexton. ‘I’m sure there’s lots of smiling faces across the country. We speak about it all the time, primarily family at home but also the people of Ireland that we represent. I don’t think they could be much prouder.’
Defeat for New Zealand was their fifth from the past eight meetings between the countries, to heap further pressure on coach Ian Foster.
‘I want to congratulate Ireland,’ said Foster, who refused to discuss his future. ‘They’re a big test for us and we fell a bit short. Clearly we’ve got work to do.’