Ronan Kelleher was refusing to get carried away after last Saturday’s win despite helping Ireland to a 100 per cent lineout success on their own ball.
Ireland’s lineout came in for scrutiny after an unusually poor showing in the November test window. And when the issues spread to Leinster’s set-piece in the early rounds of the Champions Cup, there were fears that Irish rugby was heading for a lineout crisis.
But after winning all of their 23 lineouts in the opening weekend of this year’s Six Nations, any ideas of a suspect Irish set-piece have been firmly pushed to the back burner.
And as Kelleher explains, all that was needed was a little fine-tunning.
“To be honest we haven’t done much different,” said Leinster and Ireland hooker Kelleher.
“We just kept to the same principles, the same thing that we kind of would’ve known, worked like. So, we just kind of kept to the same principles and same stuff where we focus on the small little details in the lineout. The lift, the maul etc.”
Saturday’s stats also set a new Six Nations record.
Despite this impressive showing Kelleher maintains that no-one, including forwards coach Paul O’Connell are losing the run of themselves. Instead, he points to the fact that everyone is keeping their feet firmly on the ground.
“What happened on the day is things clicked. We focused on small little details over in Portugal I suppose, but yeah, we were focusing on those details as well. I suppose we did well with what we got and yeah, maybe those small little details paid off and paid dividends today.
“We’re keeping very level headed. We don’t read much into it. We kind of look at ourselves and what we can do better and I suppose as I’ve touched on before, little small details in the lift, in the throw. Can it be a touch higher or a touch lower whatever like. Just trying to get on top of the jump and trying to get max every time.”
It was no surprise that Saturday’s encounter with England turned out to be an attritional affair. The first half in particular was quite an arm wrestle before eventually throwing off the shackles of a tiring English defence.
Mack Hansen and Finlay Bealham‘s afternoons were both cut short due to injury while a few others would have been waking up on Sunday morning with a little more than a few bumps and bruises.
But with Ireland’s round two fixture against Scotland not until Sunday, Kelleher believes that the extra day recovery is vital as they prepare to what he thinks is the best Scotland team he has faced.
“Yeah, I suppose any Scotland team is always difficult to play against. They’ve obviously some class players throughout the team. We need that extra day off because it was such a physical battle out there.
“A few sore bodies but that extra day will put us in a good spot when we are coming back in.”