It was always possible that all the talk of permutations would be made redundant by a convincing win. Even so the clinical nature of Ireland’s performance in beating Scotland 36-14 to seal first place in Pool B amid a sea of green in the Stade de France on Saturday night surpassed expectations.
Andy Farrell’s side thus set up a revenge World Cup quarter-final against the All Blacks, who beat Ireland 46-14 at the same juncture in Japan four years ago. But given how they had categorised this Celtic shoot-out as a glorified knock-out tie, a “very happy” Johnny Sexton was especially pleased with how his side sealed the win by outscoring Scotland 26-0 in the first half.
“Sometimes when you know in the back of your mind that you’ve got different permutations if you get one point, if you get two, if you’re losing, all these different things ... we just needed to narrow the focus and say, ‘we’re here to win the game and put in a performance to do that.’
“So very happy with the lads and we’re exactly where we wanted to be in terms of we won the pool and now we’re into the quarter-final.
“We always knew most likely play France or New Zealand. There’s no easy option there and now we’ve got New Zealand, so it will be a very tough game. I see that they were talking about revenge already and stuff like that, so it will be a game they want and we need to be ready for it.”
Sexton had said after the epic 13-8 win over the Springboks a fortnight previously that he had never experienced an Irish crowd at a fixture abroad quite like it, but despite this ruthless win lacking the same unflinching intensity, the Irish captain said this surpassed the South African game.
“My brother text me about three hours before the game. He was down at the stadium already and he just said, ‘wait until you see what it’s like.’ He wasn’t here last week, my other brother was here last week, but I took his word for it.
“We have a Scottish physio who told me it would be a 50:50 crowd. I said ‘we’ll see’. They give us some of the best days of our lives, and it’s important that we repay that with our performance and give them something to cheer about. We definitely did tonight.
“It’s all about next week now. Against South Africa we knew we had two weeks to prepare but we’re focused already on next week.”
Farrell confirmed that Mack Hansen, James Lowe and James Ryan were Ireland’s primary injury concerns.
“Obviously, we’ll see how they pull up in the morning but Mack went off with a HIA and when he came back on he felt his calf straight away, so we got him off,” Farrell said.
“James Ryan has a bit of a knock on his wrist that we have to assess more, so we’ll see how he is now.
“James Lowe got a bang in the eye, his eye shut and he couldn’t really see much. His vision was coming back towards the end of the game, which is good. Then, a few more bangs and bruises that we’ll need to assess tomorrow.”
One of the undoubted advantages of topping Pool B, as it transpires, and so earning a quarter-final, is that it will ensure more Irish support next weekend than would have been the case against the hosts next Sunday.
[ Ireland 36 Scotland 14: How the Irish players rated at Stade de FranceOpens in new window ]
“All our focus was, ‘let’s win the pool’. You don’t pick and choose, you just do your best. Now that we do have New Zealand, it’s likely we’ll have more supporters there which will hopefully give us a lift at certain times,” said Sexton.
“We’ve played New Zealand plenty of times and they’ve come into some good form themselves over the last few weeks. It’s going to be a hell of a game and we just need to prepare right over the next few days and get the best performance we can out there.”
Farrell himself could be seen gazing up at the crowd as The Wild Rover was being played in the post-match Irish playlist and explained: “My wife and me two girls were there, that’s why I was singing to them.
“I think it’s amazing, the songs at the end of the game, I love all that. We got a bit of stick, didn’t we, for walking around against South Africa, but we walk round and thank the fans after every game.
“It’s the least we can do when they turn up in their thousands like they’ve done. We play for them, we talk about it every week. I talked about it before the game today in the dressingroom, it means more than what people think, 100 per cent, and I know that France is buzzing with Irish people, but I believe it’s bonkers back home.
“We’re torn a bit, enjoying it with the fans back home or stay here? We’ll stay here for now! We know when we turn up for training on Monday that we’re not just doing it for ourselves.”
Farrell also refuted the notion that this was a better time for Ireland to be encountering New Zealand rather than France.
“No, no. I think New Zealand are a fantastic side, and for little old Ireland to be talked about in the same bracket as the All Blacks shows how far we’ve come as a rugby playing nation. The respect we’ve got for New Zealand is through the roof. The form they’ve got at this moment in time is top drawer, and like Johnny said, I’m sure that they will be relishing this fixture to try and put a few things right. It’s tough, it’s as tough as it gets.
“Two weeks ago, it was a tough game and this one was knock-out type rugby so it gets a whole lot tougher next week against the All Blacks and hopefully they will need to be at their best to beat us as well.
“First things first, we’ll enjoy tonight because it was a big week for us, we knew it was a big game against Scotland. Scotland are a fantastic side and we paid them the respect that they deserve and that’s why we came out with a performance like we did in the first half.
“We’ll enjoy tonight. The wives, girlfriends and families are over and we’ll make sure that we enjoy that. We’ll recover properly and we’ll treat this week, I’m sure once we recover properly, with a spring in our step because if you can’t get excited about what’s coming ... this is proper living now, this is exactly where you want to be and these boys have been waiting for opportunities, big games to show what they’ve learnt for a while now. It doesn’t get any bigger than next week so we’ll relish that.”
