Andy Farrell admitted the foot injury which forced Dan Sheehan to leave the field with a discernible limp in the 37th minute of Ireland’s 29-10 win over England was a cause for concern.
“Dan’s lost a bit of power in his foot,” said the Irish head coach, adding: “It seems to be the same old story, doesn’t it?” This was presumably in relation to the injury Jack Conan suffered in the victory over Italy a fortnight ago.
“We won’t know until we get it looked at, scanned or whatever,” said Farrell, looking suitably concerned about the wellbeing of a player who has become a key member of the team. “So, we’ll probably know more in the morning.”
Sheehan’s injury is all the more concerning given Ronan Kelleher was ruled out of this second warm-up match with a hamstring issue, although Farrell said he was no worries about the latter’s wellbeing.
As for Ireland’s mixed bag of a performance, Farrell said: “It had a bit of everything, good, bad and ugly, really. I wasn’t too happy at half time. I thought we had them in a place where we could just try and push a little bit harder and make it a little bit easier for ourselves, but we didn’t.
“We didn’t kick on in the first half, probably because England’s lineout defence was pretty good and we made it a bit scrappy for ourselves. But I was really pleased that we found our rhythm back into the game in the second half there. In regards to the lineout as well, I thought it was much better and we scored some great tries.
“In the first half, we could have come out of the blocks a little bit harder and pushed that little bit more. The story of the game is we won, which is great. We scored five tries so hopefully that’s nice for the crowd and a little bit entertaining before we go away.”
But the crowd were ultimately sent into the night happy to have witnessed the perfect final flourish, and Farrell could scarcely conceal his happiness about that.
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“Obviously the story of the day, it’s very fitting that Keith gets his 100th cap and we make sure that he does that with a win, and also him scoring a try in Keith Earls style in the corner as well just made the day for everybody really.”
Earls may also have given Farrell a nudge toward one of the final places in his 33-man World Cup squad, to be finalised after next Saturday’s final warm-up game against Samoa in Bayonne, to be announced the following Monday.
Asked if he was close to final his final 33, Farrell smiled and said:
“Always close. We’ll see how people pull up tomorrow, then see how they train Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then we’ll finalise that towards the end of the week internally. Then we’ll let you know.”
Regarding Billy Vunipola’s red card, Farrell said: “It just highlights for us massively that it isn’t just the tackle height, it’s discipline in general. There are cards everywhere at the minute, and there is a realisation as well that at the start of competitions, certainly World Cups, referees are going to be red hot on stuff, so making sure that we’re the most disciplined side is something that we’re chasing down.”
The Irish captain James Ryan admitted to feeling a little frustrated with Ireland’s performance.
“Obviously we are happy to get the win, but we judge ourselves pretty harshly because we just want to get better and better. I thought the first half was a little bit disappointing, we just didn’t really get into the flow that we wanted to for a number of reasons.
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“I thought the second half was better but we are still looking for that full 80-minute performance that we want to get out of this preseason block.
“A lot of lessons heading into Samoa next week. That will be the ambition, to put in a performance that we can be happy for the full 80 minutes.”
Ryan’s irritation emanated in large part from Ireland’s difficulties at the lineout.
“Their lineout defence was good, they got good air pressure. But the main pressure we came under was just pressure on the ground. They were able to get through seams very effectively. We gave them too much access there, so they were able to swim through and either cause us to knock on the ball or we weren’t able to retain possession.
“It’s just some poor drill. Generally the lineout has been a real strength of ours and it’s something we like going to, so it’s a good reminder for us that we need to be fully on it.
“We will have to take some lessons from it today going into next week and the next few weeks.”
