THE IRISH PLAYERS were somewhat surprised to be turned back from the dressing rooms at Estadio Centenario, last night, and to be directed toward a makeshift trophy presentation area.
Captain Paul O’Connell led his players back to the halfway line and lifted the Admiral Brown trophy. The bauble goes to the winner of each Test match between the nations so Ireland will have to beat their hosts again next weekend if they want to pack it up in bubble-wrap for the return flight to Dublin.
Speaking to Sky Sports after Ireland’s 29-17 victory, O’Connell was aware of the physical demands Argentina would place on his team and sounded reprimanding words for his teammates. “We didn’t know we were going to be as inaccurate as we were. We put a lot of balls down and missed some tackles,” he said.
They had some very big men, some really good footwork and they put us under a lot of pressure and it kind of thrived off our mistakes, we were unlucky not to score a try early in the first-half. And 30 seconds later we were lucky not to concede a try.
“So that’s kind of the way they play and we knew that but I suppose we were intent on trying to stop that and we didn’t do that.”
O’Connell believes a true champion side need to be able to record wins when not at their best. In that regard, he was pleased that his team recovered from 10-6 down to win comfortably after tries from Chris Henry, Jonny Sexton and Andrew Trimble.
“You look at what England did going down to New Zealand putting in a big performance against them. That’s what we needed to do and we didn’t do that. This gives us something to work on now and something to review over the next few days and knowing Joe Schmidt it will be a very tough review and hopefully our performance will improve next week
“They put us under a lot of pressure, I think the result is great but the performance is disappointing.”
