Ireland full back Hugo Keenan insists that thoughts of avenging last year’s World Cup quarter-final loss to New Zealand was never on the table.
Keenan was speaking after being on the wrong end of a 23-13 defeat to the All-Blacks last Friday night and the Leinster man maintained that all of Ireland’s energy and focus was purely on this test match and not the events in Paris last year when Ireland fell to an agonising 28-24 defeat
“No, we weren’t building it up as a revenge game or anything like that in our heads,” said Keenan.
“We were focusing on ourselves and our journey, on what it meant for us to win this game no matter what who it was against.
“We obviously knew the calibre of the players, the coaches and the stuff that they bring. It’s a new group for them. It’s a sort of a few changes for us. A few changes for them. No, I don’t think that was the issue.”
The disappointment was etched all over Keenan’s face and he found it difficult to put his finger on the reasoning for such an off-colour display.
“We definitely disappointed over it. It definitely wasn’t the performance we were looking for that we knew we had in us.
“I thought our preparation over the last 12 days had actually been really good.
“The lads had been working hard. We had been getting over our detail and we were feeling confident and the belief was there definitely going into the week and we were definitely not lacking motivation.
“So, it’s hard to put your finger on it an hour post kick-off. Sort of accuracy on the basics and the discipline were probably the obvious ones that are staying tonight.”
After congratulating New Zealand on their win, Keenan stresses that he and his teammates can’t dwell too much on their loss as they prepare to face up to another battle this Friday night against another familiar old foe in Argentina.
“But they (New Zealand) are a top-class side and to in fairness, they were the better side on the day. They deserved their win. They were better for it.
“But we can’t be feeling sorry for ourselves can we. We’ve got an exciting task with Argentina coming ahead. They’re obviously playing very good footy at the moment. They’re high in confidence after beating each of the southern hemisphere sides in the rugby championship.
“So, they are going to be hungry coming with belief and it’s important that we turn the page quick and start focusing on them and not feeling sorry for ourselves and get cracking into it.
“That’s the good thing; we’ve got three more games coming up but so it’s just going to be full focus on making sure that we do get the performance. Because I don’t think we were too far off tonight, just a bit of accuracy and discipline let us down, so fixing that and I’m sure the coaches will have a lot more us as well.”
