Costello delivers in Test of character

All week, at the back of his mind, Victor Costello would have been acutely conscious that this was it. His big chance, but also possibly his last chance, to relaunch his Test career. Rarely can he have gone into a game under so much personal pressure. Though playing as well as at any time in his career, it was time to deliver. Big time.

"It was, I was aware of this," he admitted, "but the work was done. We did a lot of work in the last week and a half, a lot of phyiscal work and a lot of video work, so everything was ready, and I was ready to go."

He and Anthony Foley alternated between blindside and their more natural position of number eight, and Costello conceded that the notion of sometimes having to play in a somewhat unchartered position had unnerved him.

"I just got my head around it during the week and for this game it probably worked, and it's great to get the result. I've watched a lot of nearly wins and I watched the English game last year, and I thought I'd never be a part of a very good win at Lansdowne Road. So now that I am part of one I'm savouring every minute of it.

"This and the Celtic League," said Costello, would now constitute the high points of his career so far. "Lansdowne Road has been good to me. I think we had the idea that we were going to finish this. South Africa two years ago, lost, good performance. New Zealand last year, lost, good performance and we were sick of these nearly wins.

"While we relied on our defence and they were coming at us, they weren't really giving us what we thought they'd give us. We expected a lot more from them. So as that went on, we knew we could go on and win this, and it's a huge step.

"People will say, 'Is this the turning point'? And my answer to that is that beating the world champions is as good as anything.

"Having the foundation of beating the world champions is certainly a good start. We'd targeted a win. I dunno what people were saying outside but I presume they thought we were going to lose and we went out believing we could win and we won."

A big statement by Ronan O'Gara. He pulled the strings and answered the doubters about his big-match, place-kicking temperament after his difficulties with the Adidas ball in New Zealand.

"I didn't panic after that and I'm not going to read too much into this. I've been working quite hard on it. It didn't go well in Dunedin, it went well today but I couldn't say there was much of a difference in terms of preparation. Today is the best it can be in terms of goalkicking in those conditions."

O'Gara has been averaging over 80 per cent this season, and Saturday will have been a further boost, though he can't quite put his finger on the reasons why.

"I think I've had a bit of a hard shell about me since I was a youngster. Obviously there's been bad days, and today was a good day, but overall I know I'm good enough to kick for Ireland. That's basically what it boils down to. Today I was in the zone and I could have been kicking anywhere today."

Talking of the "wretched" conditions, O'Gara commented: "I don't think some of their players were too interested in it after a while, and you could sense that."

Defence, O'Gara said, was the key.

"Not being cocky or anything, but it was comfortable in that we had nine points. It could have been a different ball game if we were six points up and we all had defending to do. Once we had a two-score difference I felt quite confident and it was quite enjoyable working away. Maggsy, Drico and Shaggy (Shane Horgan) would be the people I'd be in direct communication with and everyone was extremely pumped and looking for work. I don't think it was a case of hanging on at all, just playing what we had in front of us."

O'Gara also paid tribute to O'Driscoll's leadership, albeit after laughing that the Irish number 13 "was sucking diesel at times there. Obviously any time he gets the ball there's a buzz about the place and we got him away on a few and he was making serious yardage. People look up to him and his leadership is the exact same too. He leads from the front. I think he deserves an awful lot of credit, and the pack too, for the way they performed. It was one of those days when you needed your pack to perform and they delivered."