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8th February 2020
05:52pm GMT
Following the game, Johnny Sexton spoke about a Friday night meeting that took place at the Ireland team hotel and focused the minds before battle. Former captain Rory Best spoke about Joe Schmidt seizing too much control during the World Cup.
Andy Farrell was more than happy to hear his captain was taking a players-only meeting the night before this crucial game. On the meeting, Sexton said:
"What we spoke about last night was what the coaches had given to us all week, and trying to put responsibility on ourselves to deliver that. We felt that we didn't do that, last week, to the best of our ability and we talked about why that was the case. "It was just about fixing up those little bits that would allow us to get back into the game and show some of that stuff that we were working on. That was really it. Obviously there was some motivational stuff that you want to get across. We wanted to show what it means to us to play for Ireland. "We didn't see that as much last week as it was a stop-start game, and you don't get to celebrate tries. We got a bit of everything today, so that was great."The Ireland captain said one of the main ideas was to get the ball into the hands of the back three - of Conway, Jordan Larmour and Jacob Stockdale - and that was certainly the case today. Between that trio, they made 33 carries, for 185 metres with seven line breaks and two tries. Asked if that was 'a 2018 performance' from Ireland, Sexton took umbrage with some articles - albeit based on some pretty strong primary sources - about Ireland making a fresh start after Joe Schmidt. "Look, we’re trying to move forward," he began. "To suggest that we have thrown away everything that we learned under Joe is just wrong… some of the messages coming out were not accurate."
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