No doubt echoing his master's voice, albeit he assuredly has a mind of his own, Rob Kearney yesterday strove to keep the win over South Africa in some perspective by noting Ireland have become a little carried away in the past, and that Saturday's performance still paled by comparison to the one in Paris which clinched the Six Nations title.
Recalling the 2009 calendar year when they won the Slam and drew with Australia before beating South Africa in November, Kearney said: “I think we went 12 months unbeaten, we beat South Africa in Croke Park in the last game in November and everything was rosy then, and expectation had built up massively. So I stress it’s so important not to get too carried away.”
Lessons
The lessons to be learned from the years that followed underlined the need to evolve. “It’s more just having an understanding and a desire you constantly need to improve. We won the Grand Slam in ’09 and maybe we were guilty of not developing our game a huge amount the following season.
“If we play the exact same standard and type of rugby we did in the last Six Nations we won’t win it again. So we need to be constantly improving. We need to be looking to better ourselves individually as a team.”
The win over South Africa constituted Ireland's first November win over one of the Southern Hemisphere big three since 2009, and first of any hue against the trio since the World Cup pool win in Eden Park over Australia three years ago. It would reinforce the belief within the squad they can beat anyone on their day, although again this came with a rider.
Right balance
“Confidence is a brilliant thing and sometimes over-confidence can be a detrimental thing too. It’s key we find the balance between the two and by no means we get carried away with one win over a South African team that played poorly and it didn’t really seem as if the defeat hurt them too much. I think that has to our biggest mindset; that we’re very aware of what was achieved but by no means losing the run of ourselves”
Hence, Kearney reckoned the Paris performance was better. “I think Paris was a pretty good 80 minute display, even though we were very lucky in that 79th minute. I think that was the closest performance we’ve had yet to an 80 minute performance. I don’t think the weekend was it, no.”
Keeping a lid on heightened expectations from the public might be more difficult now but Kearney countered that “expectations are massively set within as well. Expectations in our team room are huge as well . . . I said to you I think it was in summer we wanted the three from three in this series and players have to have an ability to think like that if we want to be high achievers and to fulfil our own expectations.”
Reflecting on where the performance fell short against South Africa, Kearney said: “We didn’t get into their 22 a huge amount. We didn’t build too many phases around that area that put us in a position to score tries. Our two tries came from one pre-planned set-piece, the ball was kicked outside the 22, and the other was from a string kick chase and Willie le Roux gave us a handy five metre lineout out from play. We do have to maybe work on getting into the 22 and building some more phases.
