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Tadhg Beirne perfectly sums up Ireland's win over South Africa
By PA
Tadhg Beirne admits Ireland had to “fight for everything” against South Africa and could easily have come out on the wrong side of a “ferocious” battle in Paris.
Test rugby’s number one nation were under severe pressure for much of the second half at Stade de France but doggedly dug in during the closing stages to secure a statement 13-8 success.
Victory over the World Cup holders stretched Ireland’s remarkable winning run to 16 matches while propelling them to the brink of the quarter-finals.
“I’m obviously ecstatic to come away with the win,” said Munster lock Beirne.
“We made tough work of it a bit in the second half, we probably struggled to get out of our half a bit.
“But the resilience we showed and the defence we showed we’ll be pretty pleased with that. They’re a big physical side and they certainly threw a lot of punches out there.
“When you’re in it, you probably don’t realise how ferocious it is, you’re just next-moment focused and we did have to fight for everything.
“It was a hard-fought battle for sure and it could easily have went the other way. We showed a lot of resilience at the end to keep them out.”
Ireland’s performance was hindered by repeated line-out losses but they benefited from the Springboks’ wayward goal-kicking.
Beirne believes his side deserve credit for sticking to their plan amid the set-piece struggles as they ultimately underlined their status as one of the tournament favourites.
“The way South Africa defend, they’re one of the best defensive teams in terms of the line-out,” said the 31-year-old.
“We knew they were going to be good. We had a plan, it just didn’t go the way we wanted at the start so we stuck with the plan and then it started to come good for us.
“Sometimes you win some line-outs that you think you had a plan for and sometimes you lose them, and at the start we lost them. But we didn’t fold, we stuck with the plan.
“We knew how big this game was, so it’s quite satisfying to get the win.”
South Africa missed three penalties – two from scrum-half Faf de Klerk and one from fly-half Manie Libbok.
Libbok also failed to convert Cheslin Kolbe’s try, prompting suggestions he should be replaced by the fit-again Handre Pollard, who was added to the Springboks’ squad last weekend, moving forward.
“That we’ll have to sit down and discuss,” said head coach Jacques Nienaber, whose side take on Tonga next Sunday. “There are a lot of things that go into team selection.
“We missed a couple of points off the tee but I won’t say that’s the reason solely for not getting across the line.”
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Sophie De Goede is one of the best players we’ve ever produced. Kicked all the points, 2 try assists, line out takes, carries, tackles, charge downs… what a player
Go to commentsThe guy had just beasted himself in a scrum and the blood hadn't yet returned to his head when he was pushed into a team mate. He took his weight off his left foot precisely at the moment he was shoved and dropped to the floor when seemingly trying to avoid stepping on Hyron Andrews’ foot. I don't think he was trying to milk a penalty, I think he was knackered but still switched on enough to avoid planting 120kgs on the dorsum of his second row’s foot. To effectively “police” such incidents with a (noble) view to eradicating play acting in rugby, yet more video would need to be reviewed in real time, which is not in the interest of the game as a sporting spectacle. I would far rather see Farrell penalised for interfering with the refereeing of the game. Perhaps he was right to be frustrated, he was much closer to the action than the only camera angle I've seen, however his vocal objection to Rodd’s falling over doesn't legitimately fall into the captain's role as the mouthpiece of his team - he should have kept his frustration to himself, that's one of the pillars of rugby union. I appreciate that he was within his rights to communicate with the referee as captain but he didn't do this, he moaned and attempted to sway the decision by directing his complaint to the player rather than the ref. Rugby needs to look closely at the message it wants to send to young players and amateur grassroots rugby. The best way to do this would be to apply the laws as they are written and edit them where the written laws no longer apply. If this means deleting laws such as ‘the put in to the scrum must be straight”, so be it. Likewise, if it is no longer necessary to respect the referee’s decision without questioning it or pre-emptively attempting to sway it (including by diving or by shouting and gesticulating) then this behaviour should be embraced (and commercialised). Otherwise any reference to respecting the referee should be deleted from the laws. You have to start somewhere to maintain the values of rugby and the best place to start would be giving a penalty and a warning against the offending player, followed by a yellow card the next time. People like Farrell would rapidly learn to keep quiet and let their skills do the talking.
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