Australia coach Eddie Jones said that some harsh words spoken at half-time had sparked his side into a revival that saw them end a run of seven straight defeats by beating Ireland 30-14 in Dublin on Saturday.
Jones, for whom the pressure on his job will now be slightly lessened, said that he, captain George Gregan and the vice-captains had had words with the rest of the team after going into the break 6-3 down.
”We had a collective chat and told the guys to be more physical and be lower in the tackle,” said Jones, whose side avoided the unenviable mark of being sole holders of the worst losing run in Wallaby history which they now share with the 1969 crop, a time when Australia were not regarded as a rugby power.
”They were harsh words and from then on once you saw the manner the boys started the second-half [they scored 10 points in the opening five minutes] there was only going to be one winner,” added Jones, who guided Australia to the 2003 World Cup final.
Jones said that he and the rest of the squad — who to be fair have come to the tour without several key players including fly-half Stephen Larkham — had always felt the elusive victory was not far away.
”I and the others knew that if we did manage to turn our scoring opportunities into real points then victory was never going to be that far off,” said the former hooker.
Man of the match Chris Latham — who scored a brilliant individual try — said that softer teams would have run up the white flag even at 6-3 down.
”We fronted up,” said the 30-year-old fullback.
”It has been very frustrating with these run of defeats and the way things have been going it would have been easy for us to fold when things weren’t going our way.
”Courage got us there,” added Latham, scorer of 29 tries in his 58 internationals.
Jones said there was still work to be done as they head to Wales and a final Test of the tour against the Six Nations Grand Slam champions.
”We will have to play even better than we did today against the Irish,” he said.
”That is no disrespect to the Irish, who I thought played considerably better than they did against the All Blacks last Saturday [a 45-7 thrashing],” said Jones, who has injury doubts about Matt Giteau — who sat out the match — and his replacement at fly-half Matt Rogers.
”Mind you Matt is so courageous and dedicated that he would play for us if he had only one leg,” said Jones.
For Jones’ Irish counterpart Eddie O’Sullivan there would seemingly not be much to smile about — after a succession of dropped balls and lost scrums ruined several promising positions they had got themselves into and the composure he had called for just wasn’t there.
However he had a sunnier disposition than one might have expected.
”We played very well in the first half and were unfortunate not to be up by more which would have been justified but then there was the high pass that cost us a try near the end of the period and that was that,” said O’Sullivan, referring to Geordan Murphy’s pass which soared over Tommy Bowe’s head when the wing had a clear run to the line.
”However the second-half was a different story and we had a really bad start to it which was crucial. I thought, though, we defended well but we didn’t execute well with passes going astray etcetra,” added O’Sullivan, who is coming under increasing criticism as the side has declined since winning the Six Nations Triple Crown last year.
O’Sullivan, though, defended his decision to replace fly-half Ronan O’Gara with veteran David Humphreys on the hour mark — a decision that did not pay off as Humphreys missed the tackle on Latham for his try and then his pass was picked off deep in Australian territory and run back for Drew Mitchell’s second try of the match.
”I just felt we needed a calm head out there and that the game was drifting away from Ronan so I put on David to try and cool the guys down,” he said.
As for Jones there was only one cool thing he was heading for.
”I am going to have a few beers tonight I can tell you!” – Sapa-AFP