Overcoming Fiji’s physicality is precious experience ahead of Springboks, says Farrell

Andy Farrell can sometimes surprise in his post-match analysis, not least in the wake of his team playing Fiji. After the scratchy 35-17 win in the autumn of 2022 the Irish head coach was unusually scathing in his assessment of the performance whereas, understandably, he mostly saw the positives in the clinical 52-17 victory two years ago.

After this hard-earned but ultimately convincing 43-15 win in the Nations Championship, which left Ireland third in the Northern Hemisphere table behind England on points’ difference and a point adrift of France, he found a middle ground. Moderately satisfied one could say.

“I’m pleased to get the win, especially the scoreline. I thought it flattered us a little bit,” admitted the Irish head coach, “but having said that, you’ve got to work for those points and find a way, especially when after 25 minutes you’re down by five points against a side that’s playing pretty well as far as the physical nature of the game.

“I thought they were winning collisions, good in the air, good on the floor, running really physically through the line, and the breakdown was pretty good, so they were on a roll, and when you’ve seen them like that before, you’ve seen them take some big scalps.

“So to come through with that scoreline and how we got ourselves back in the game, brought a bit of energy back to our game, which was a stop-start type game that we contributed to with a few errors.

“[It was also] a stop-start nature in regards to having a look at ‘try or no try’ and how long that was and all of that, all in all, I think we need to understand that winning when you’re under a bit of pressure, they’re all pretty precious.”

Farrell also agreed with his counterpart Jake White that Fiji had done Ireland a favour by playing a little like South Africa, the wounded back-to-back world champions who return to the Aviva Stadium next Saturday determined to inflict the same kind of carnage against Ireland here they managed a year ago.

“Exactly, we were just saying in the changing room there that we’ll learn some good lessons and use them in the right manner for next week.”

This win over Fiji will always be remembered as James McNabney’s cameo off the bench on debut. Alas, after the second of two huge carries which took the big Ulster backrower to within inches of a try his debut was sadly cut short by a head injury from which he did not return.

Farrell at least confirmed that McNabney was recovering well and could remember his two breaks.

“Well, he’s joking in the changing rooms. He’s delighted with himself for the shortest cameo of a first cap. I reckon it’s the best cameo of three-and-a-half minutes or whatever it was on a debut in Irish history really.

“He remembers the two breaks that he made, so he seems in good spirits.”

Farrell confirmed that McNabney will join Caelan Doris, Jack Conan and Sean Jansen in being ruled out of next week’s game due to the mandatory 12-day return to play protocols, which is a shame.

“Exactly. He was in our thoughts 100 per cent in regards to next week.”

As for Jamie Osborne, who departed in the fourth minute, Farrell said: “Yeah, poor lad. It looks like a pec muscle, so that doesn’t look too good when he’s coming off after the first contact. They got into the hole just on the outside of him. His body wasn’t behind him. I think he just reached out and felt it straight away. So, not great for him.”

Sam Illo also had to depart for an HIA after another lively cameo, if not on the scale of McNabney’s, and Farrell said: “Yeah, Sam’s going through the protocols now with HIA.”

Invariably, attention had quickly turned to next week’s renewal of the rivalry with South Africa.

“We review every game, obviously, and take the learnings from that, but the quicker we do that and the quicker we turn the page on to what’s going to be an unbelievably exciting week with the world champions coming to town, it really doesn’t get any better than that.

“To be able to test yourselves, especially with the type of rugby that they’re playing at this moment in time, it’s a fantastic challenge for us.

“But it’s a game that we would look forward to because there’s a lot of respect that we have there for South Africa and what they’ve done, not just at World Cups but certainly over the last 18 months or so as well.

“So to be able to test ourselves here on a Saturday at 4 o’clock (kick-off is 4.40pm) is gonna be a great afternoon for us, for everyone.”