Overcoming Fiji’s physicality is precious experience ahead of Springboks, says Farrell

Résumé détaillé

Farrell also agreed with his counterpart Jake White that Fiji had done Ireland a favour by playing a little like South Africa, the wounded back-to-back world champions who return…

Andy Farrell can sometimes surprise in his post-match analysis, not least in the wake of his team playing Fiji. After the scratchy 35-17 win in the autumn of 2022 the Irish head coach was unusually scathing in his assessment of the performance whereas, understandably, he mostly saw the positives in the clinical 52-17 victory two years ago.

After this hard-earned but ultimately convincing 43-15 win in the Nations Championship, which left Ireland third in the Northern Hemisphere table behind England on points’ difference and a point adrift of France, he found a middle ground. Moderately satisfied one could say.

“I’m pleased to get the win, especially the scoreline. I thought it flattered us a little bit,” admitted the Irish head coach, “but having said that, you’ve got to work for those points and find a way, especially when after 25 minutes you’re down by five points against a side that’s playing pretty well as far as the physical nature of the game.

“I thought they were winning collisions, good in the air, good on the floor, running really physically through the line, and the breakdown was pretty good, so they were on a roll, and when you’ve seen them like that before, you’ve seen them take some big scalps.

“So to come through with that scoreline and how we got ourselves back in the game, brought a bit of energy back to our game, which was a stop-start type game that we contributed to with a few errors.

“[It was also] a stop-start nature in regards to having a look at ‘try or no try’ and how long that was and all of that, all in all, I think we need to understand that winning when you’re under a bit of pressure, they’re all pretty precious.”

Farrell also agreed with his counterpart Jake White that Fiji had done Ireland a favour by playing a little like South Africa, the wounded back-to-back world champions who return to the Aviva Stadium next Saturday determined to inflict the same kind of carnage against Ireland here they managed a year ago.

“Exactly, we were just saying…

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