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AUTUMN INTERNATIONAL Ireland 15 South Africa 10: IT’S AMAZING what a little bit of will, allied to skill, can achieve. As is true of all Declan Kidney’s teams, Ireland are now infused with an unshakeable self-belief and work ethic, and that willingness to go the extra yard, make the extra man or the extra tackle, and to row with the punches before working out whatever is required to reach the winning line.

Invariably, there are virtually no weak links in the chain, or if there are (such as the scrum here) they are somehow overcome or worked out. In the heel of the hunt, Ireland had vastly more of the game, won more possession, applied more pressure and thus utterly deserved to win. Yet such are the inevitable wafer-thin margins in these games it needed the rub of the green too. Whereas Jonathan Sexton played with the assurance of a player with 50 caps rather than one, and landed five beautifully-struck penalties while missing two from long range, Morne Steyn had an unusually awry day all-round and missed all of his three penalties at goal.