Simon Easterby cut a relieved figure in the aftermath of Ireland's victory in Wales but said he was proud of his players after getting out of a "bit of a hole".
The defending Guinness Six Nations champions found themselves 18-10 down and a man down for 20 minutes as Wales threatened to pull off a massive shock at the Principality Stadium.
But the rejuvenated hosts didn’t score after Ireland were back to full complement with Bundee Aki coming on in the 55th minute for Garry Ringrose, who had a yellow card upgraded to red after a bunker review.
Ireland picked up the Triple Crown and remain on course for a Grand Slam with games against France and Italy to come.
"Pleased with the result but lots of things in the game that we feel we could have done better," was Easterby’s initial assessment of the 27-18 win.
"We go down in the game, we go down a man and then we go down on the scoreboard.
"We came in at half-time and felt like if we played in the right way and did things better our way then we felt we could dominate them.
"We had a lot of possession and territory for 30 minutes, just didn't quite get our accuracy right in terms of scoring the points that we needed.
"We knew that Wales would come back into it if we gave them an opportunity and we did that.
"I was pleased that we responded to being in a bit of a hole and we dug ourselves out and took the game away from them in the last 20."
Ringrose was sent off for a high challenge on Ben Thomas in the 35th minute. Wales went on to score 12 points when Ireland had 14 players on the field.
"Those can go either way, Ringer's a great player for us, everything he does is with intent, in terms of the speed he works at," said Easterby.
"That's probably what cost him there, the speed of his movement off the line and he just doesn't quite drop enough.
"He's certainly far from a dirty player, it's just one of those things, it could have gone either way. It could have been a yellow.
"There was another incident late in the game that could have gone either way. It didn't fall in our favour, these things happen.
"I was pleased with how the lads responded to that, even though we conceded at the end of the first half we found our way back into the game when we were down a man and Bundee [Aki] coming on made a huge impact."
Ireland were overwhelming favourites to hand Wales a 15th consecutive loss but Easterby felt that some of the media talk during the week was disrespectful to Matt Sherratt’s side.
"There has been some really poor media talk around Wales and the state of the game etc etc," he said.
"We knew that they would be tough opposition today. We knew that they would play with passion, you look at some of the tries they scored, even the one Ellis Mee didn’t score in the corner, they have the ability to play well and play with ball in hand.
"They made us work really hard for it. Matt has done a brilliant job.
"We knew the game would be a lot tougher than some people in the media suggested and it panned out that way."
Interim boss Sherratt only took charge on Monday after the departure of Warren Gatland.
"Firstly, I loved it, it was a great game," Sherratt said.
"This week has just been about us trying to get some confidence in the group and then trying to imprint what we've done on the field, and for large parts they did that.
"We put a clear plan together for the players, one or two things we thought we could put all our energy into, because there has been no lack of emotion and passion from the boys.
"It was just about removing the fear and letting them go on the field and express themselves a little bit within our structures."
