Joe Schmidt said Ireland's ability to convert their early chances into scores made all the difference in their 13-9 win over England at the Aviva Stadium.
Speaking to RTÉ Sport after the win, which denied England back-to-back Grand Slams, the Irish boss said there were a lot of elements of the game similar to last week's defeat to Wales.
However, this time Ireland "managed to get something on the back of the pressure early on," with Iain Henderson scoring a try on 22 minutes to give Ireland a 10-3 lead.
The win sees Ireland retain their position at number four in the world rankings, although Schmidt admitted it was touch and go.
"(We're) hanging in there, in the top four ranked teams in the world - that’s big for us," he said.
Consistency has been an issue for Ireland, as illustrated by the fact they suffered defeats at the hands of both Scotland and Wales in this campaign.
"You're not going to get consistency because there are a lot of human factors in a performance including how our opponents play and the decision the man in the middle makes," he said.
"For us we just have to keep trying to control as many as our elements in our performance as we can."
The New Zealander also praised the performance of Man of the Match Peter O'Mahony, who came into the team at the last moment after Jamie Heaslip was injured in the warm up.
"We knew Pete would (make an impact) and the plan was to get him on and really put that lineout pressure on in the second half, but he did a great job in the first half.
He also provided an early diagnosis of Heaslip's injury: "I think its an upper hamstring twinge just at the end of the warm up so it was an incredibly late change."
Looking ahead to the next Six Nations campaign, Schmidt said the side should know a bit more about themselves in 11 months time.
"There's a fair few guys who are new to Six Nations rugby.
"Guys like Tadgh Furlong, he’s learned a lot. Iain Henderson really stepped up, calling the lineouts with Donnacha tonight – it’s great to have him back 100%.
"Pete O’Mahony - that’s his first real start in a big game since injuring himself at the World Cup so some of these guys coming back in or these new guys, we'll know more about them."
