After seeing his Ireland side lose at home for the first time in 19-test matches, Andy Farrell is hoping to see a positive reaction from his squad when they face Argentina at the Aviva Stadium on Friday night.
Ireland started as favourites against New Zealand last Friday night, but it was the All-Blacks who left the south Dublin venue as winners. And they were every bit as convincing as the 10-point differential suggests.
As Ireland face the next few days looking at themselves in the mirror, head coach Farrell knows what he wants to see on the park against the Pumas this week.
“A bit of character that we know that we’ve got,” said Farrell.
“We know what we are about. After any type of defeat, you want a reaction. We’ll need a reaction because we’ve got a good team coming here next week,” he continued.
While a first home defeat since 2021 may have come as a shock to the system, Farrell has no qualms that his side will respond in the best possible fashion when they face Argentina on Friday night.
“Good teams bounce back don’t they. So, we’ll see what we are about.
“We’ve tended to do that in the past. It’s amazing isn’t it because we are the ones who have brought the expectation so we’ve got to get back on the horse and start building it again.”
But there was no hiding from that fact that this was as disappointing a display from Ireland as there has been in a long time. Certainly, since Farrell stepped into the breach after it was vacated by Joe Schmidt.
A missed tackle count of 30, and 21 handling errors were two of the main talking points from the defeat. Many were unforced and that was what annoyed the coach more than anything else from the game.
“Compounding errors,” are what frustrated Farrell amongst other things.
“Our lack of accuracy on the back of how we made ourselves feel, is something that we have been very good at actually,” he continued.
“Staying pretty level-headed through the good times and the bad times is something that we have been pretty good at and able to keep managing our way through the game but I thought we compounded too much stuff and our mood wasn’t where it should’ve been, and both of them things aren’t right.”
Ireland’s managing of the game was another area of grave concern. Great spells of defensive play were quickly eroded by mistakes which continually gave New Zealand an attacking platform time and time again.
“If you are playing, you’d expect yourself to hold on to the ball for more than a couple of phases which we didn’t do at times,” added the head coach.
“I thought we defended really well at times. I thought we got the ball back actually through staying in the fight defensively. It was how we let them get into those positions in the first place that was the problem.”
