Gerry Thornley: Irish grit backs Springboks into a corner

Ah yes, the mind is indeed a funny thing, and particularly so the Irish mindset it would appear. Recall the Super Saturday finale to the 2015 Six Nations. Had Ireland beaten Wales the week before and earned a tilt at the Grand Slam, there would not have been a manic, three-way pursuit of tries to win the championship – no Super Saturday.

Certainly it’s hard to believe Ireland would have approached their title-clinching 40-10 win over Scotland in the same manner, when moving the ball wide across the backline to Luke Fitzgerald more in the first 20 minutes than they had in the previous four games.

Mental strength, as much as anything, and the respective mindsets of the two teams in response to CJ Stander’s red card and Robbie Henshaw’s yellow card, helped to decide last Saturday’s ground-breaking Irish win. In response to Henshaw’s yellow and going 13-10 down, you could have backed Ireland at 33/1 at that juncture, had you been so inclined to even consider the possibility.

Perhaps Ireland had more belief than was the case against the All Blacks in near identical circumstances in 2010 given their history against them, whereas Saturday’s win was Ireland’s fifth in their last seven meetings with the Boks.

Fait accompli

Certainly the home crowd, having revelled in Stander’s role as pantomime villain, appeared to regard a home win as a fait accompli, to the point that they went into a relative stupor.

Both coaches made the point that teams reduced in numbers often respond by improving their work-rate. South Africa themselves had made light of an earlier yellow card to Lood de Jager in the act of conceding a try by drawing the next 10 minutes 3-3.

Even more staggeringly, Ireland won the 10 minutes when reduced to 13 men by 3-0, and the remaining 38 minutes with 14 men by 13-7 – and what’s more the only points they conceded were through an intercept try.

Teams are often given an initial lift by the arrival of a new coach. Warren Gatland, Declan Kidney and Eddie Jones all won Grand Slams in their first Six Nations' campaigns. As expected, Ireland were injected with a new- found enthusiasm for their defensive work by Andy Farrell.

Yet Farrell made the point before the game that a team's defence is as much about its mental attitude as anything technical. So it was that they could atone for 19 missed tackles, and each half ended with Paddy Jackson helping to deny the Boks a try by forcing Francois Louw and JP Pietersen onto or over the touchline.

Ireland showed real ambition. Jackson took the ball to the line, Luke Marshall acted as an alternate playmaker and Robbie Henshaw's distribution skills were better used at 13 than 12.

This was evident in the second play of the game. From the first penalty up the line and ensuing lineout, Ireland moved the ball across the line to give Andrew Trimble space on the right.

This intent then had to be tailored due to a numerical disadvantage, and Ireland kicked the ball out of hand 34 times. But there’s an art to kicking too, all the more so if that’s where the space can be located, which Connacht demonstrated with Niyi Adeolokun’s match-winning try against Glasgow and Matt Healy’s try in the final against Leinster.

Ireland’s opening try was the product of twice opting to go to the corner rather take a shot at the posts before Marshall nutmegged Damian de Allende with his dinked grubber. Marshall revealed that it was a call from Henshaw to put the grubber through.

Thus it was decidedly churlish of Springboks’ coach Allister Coetzee to declare yesterday that Ireland “weren’t interested in playing”. For sure, they tailored their tactics with a smart kicking game to ensure the game was played in the right areas. Yet despite their numerical disadvantage, overall Ireland engineered nine line breaks to seven.

Coetzee also bemoaned the Springboks’ poor kicking game, and admitted there was a need for a good kicking game in Test rugby. The Boks were indeed poor, very poor. For all their possession, their error-prone midfield, along with the off-colour Willie le Roux, ran very laterally, crowding the space out wide.

It will be surprising if they are as guilty of that again or having the ball ripped from their big carriers in contact when being caught too upright. Imagine the video review of those moments, for that probably stung their pride as much as any aspect of their defeat.

And, of course, not only are they wounded Springboks, but they have been backed into a corner too. The Springboks don’t tend to lose series, and while losing them occasionally to the Lions, France or New Zealand (in all, only seven times in history) is one thing, losing one to little Ireland would be another.

Bounces back

History has also repeatedly shown us that, mentally, few Test teams bounces back from a defeat more effectively than the Springboks, such as losing to Japan in the World Cup and then in the semi-final to New Zealand.

In each instance they responded, by first thrashing Samoa 46-6 and adding wins over Scotland, USA and Wales to reach that semi-final, and then beating Argentina 24-13 in the third-place play-off.

They tend not to lose back-to-back too often, although it did happen at home last year to New Zealand and Argentina.

The goalposts have shifted, so to speak, and not least mentally.

gthornley@irishtimes.com