Saturday, February 27, 2010

Johnson demands England backlash

Keith Earls

Highlights - England 16-20 Ireland

England manager Martin Johnson has told his team to take out the frustration of their 20-16 loss to Ireland on Scotland when the teams meet in a fortnight.

Jonny Wilkinson's drop-goal with nine minutes to go put England ahead for the first time but Tommy Bowe's second try of the match sealed Ireland's victory.

"We must keep this horrible feeling inside for two weeks and release it at Murrayfield," he said.

"It's hard when there's six minutes on the clock, you're there and you lose."

Johnson said the late defeat was "a hard loss" but said the team was a "work in progress" and they would benefit from the experience.

"We didn't help ourselves - when you get ahead you need to stay there, the game turns on those things," he said.

"It was good play from them and not good defence from us."

'Tough loss' hard to take for Johnson

Johnson described the game, played in poor weather conditions, as "typical Six Nations, pretty attritional," and said occasionally England were their own worst enemies.

"At times we tried to play too much and got turned over," he said.

"Maybe we should have pegged them back and put them under pressure, it comes back to the same old things - if you take chances and score tries you'll probably end up winning."

If England had a point to prove after their unimpressive victory over Italy last time out, then Ireland had even more to make up for after their drubbing by France in Paris.

And coach Declan Kidney said he was delighted by how his players had put that performance behind them.

"I'm hugely proud, I've got the same feeling we had at the end of last year's championship," he told BBC Sport.

Proud Kidney salutes Ireland's team effort

"We can be hard on ourselves and we're lacking a bit of belief - I'm not sure why, but we responded better. The difference between today and Paris was we took our opportunities today."

He also ruled out any worries over the health of Brian O'Driscoll, after the centre was taken off with 10 minutes remaining after being struck on the head by the knee of team-mate Paul O'Connell.

"It was nothing - he was out on the pitch at the end. He's good and is enjoying the win as much as anyone," said Kidney.

"Brian just felt he should make Paul do the press conference to make up for him giving him a bang on the head with his knee.

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"There's no risk of concussion. He's fine."

Ireland put in a remarkable 99 tackles, missing just one, and lock O'Connell said he felt both sides played as if they wanted to make amends for their most recent performances.

"I think both teams were looking to respond," he said.

"I don't think England were happy [after the Italy game] and lots of questions were asked of us [after the France game].

"Conditions were not suited to running rugby, especially in the first half, but our defence held firm and apart from that try they scored our defence was fairly comfortable.

"England are such a tough team to play against, it doesn't matter whether they're on top of the world or not doing so well, they're an incredibly physical side to play against."

Ireland's man-of-the-match Jamie Heaslip concurred with O'Connell.

Delighted O'Connell praises Ireland's defence

"We've come back from deficits before, especially in the second half and we showed belief and confidence in each other's abilities," he said.

"We got a good try and closed the game out well - England had good time on the ball and played territory well but I suppose we took our chances. The scoreboard reflects the game.

"We looked at the France game and thought we didn't take our opportunities, today we did.

"We had no doubts about what we could do, for an Ireland fan it's not that hard to get motivated for an England game, especially here at Twickenham."

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