Ireland head coach Joe Schmidt has praised his team’s defence and staying power following their nail-biting 18-11 win over France in round two of the RBS 6 Nations.
Ireland came through despite a late rally from France and go into their clash against England with a Grand Slam still possible.
Speaking to RTÉ Sport, Schmidt said: “I think when [Mathieu] Bastareaud, [Uini] Atonio and [Romain] Taofifenua started to get that go-forward ball you couldn’t stop them.
“I think we just survived and we can be really proud of the effort we took to do it. We managed to dig deep and survive.
“I think we need a breather after that. There’s some pretty tired bodies. And we made a mountain of tackles in that last quarter. I think the players deserve a fair bit of merit because they managed to do so.”
"Our kick-off strategy worked well. Our scrum and lineout worked well, we got some good pressure on their lineout” - Joe Schmidt
As for Rory Best’s sin-binning for what appeared to be a deliberate trip on a French player, Schmidt responded that he needed to see the incident again.
“I haven’t seen the replay of the sin bin. Rory insists it was accidental, but it didn’t look great apparently. Those are things that we have to look at,” said Schmidt.
The Kiwi was happy with Ireland’s control of the game in the opening 40 and also felt that their set-piece game came up trumps.
“I think we got into the game and controlled long periods of the first half,” said Schmidt.
“Our kick-off strategy worked well. Our scrum and lineout worked well, we got some good pressure on their lineout. They probably missed three or four. We got some good scrum solidity. It wasn’t until they got a guy off the bench that we struggled for going straight down.”
Out-half Johnny Sexton was removed from the field briefly for a blood substitution, and Schmidt insists that all it was, and not a concussion. Good news as the Racing Metro man has just returned from a 12-week lay off due to sustaining four concussions in the space of a year.
“He was removed because of the blood not a concussion, They did a HIA just to be extra cautious,” said Schmidt.
“It was precautionary. It was absolutely fine apart from a bit of a gash.”
Jamie Heaslip also had to leave the field of play following an illegal knee to the lower back from Pascal Pape, which resulted in the France lock being sin-binned.
Heaslip is now an injury worry for Ireland, with some reports suggesting he may have suffered a broken vertebra, and an update on the problem is expected tomorrow.
Schmidt admitted the Ireland No 8 was feeling the effects of the clash but he would not comment further on Pape’s potential citing.
“I think that will be looked at by people who make decisions about that," said Schmidt.
“The only thing I would say is that Jamie had to be removed from the field because of that and is in a lot of pain right now.”
