Ireland coach Nigel Carolan hailed his side's character after they fought back from 17-0 down to beat Wales by a point in their opening game at the U20 World Championship in Manchester on Tuesday.
Ireland fought back to within two points at the break before taking the lead through two Bill Johnston penalties and Wales missed a late conversion attempt that would have secured victory as the Irish won 26-25.
“I’m thrilled and not well. Maybe somewhere in between the two!” joked Carolan on RTÉ Radio this morning. “When we had a 17-3 deficit it looked like an uphill battle. But for us they’re only small inclines right now.
“That’s when we regrouped with about ten minutes to go in that first-half and we got the two tries.
“It just gave us that momentum for the second-half. We carried that through and we put Wales under unbelievable pressure.
“We got our noses in front and we did well to keep it there. We knew they were going to throw the kitchen sink at us for the last few minutes and the lads showed unbelievable character to close it out in the end.”
Ulster winger Jacob Stockdale's second try was the pick of three scores that reversed the result in the Six Nations, which Grand Slam-clinching Wales won 35-24.
“There were four or five uncalculated offloads that just went to hand. They’re the margins that in World Cups are between winning and losing and I’m just glad we’re on the winning side," said Carolan.
“We don’t seem to do things the easy way, we like to make hard work of things. But the lads have worked very hard since the Six Nations.
“We spoke about the confidence and the momentum that we are trying to bring into the World Cup.
“All of our focus was on this first game against Wales. All credit to the fellas, they deserve this victory. We were very confident going into the game that we could beat them.
“We just made it a little bit more difficult than we would have liked but we are very delighted to come away with the win.”
Ireland face holders New Zealand in their second game of the competition on Saturday, before the final Pool A game against Georgia next week.
The winners of the three pools plus the best second-placed side contest the semi-finals with play-offs to decide the finishing positions for the eight remaining teams.
