There’s No Better Challenge Than South Africa Coming To Aviva Stadium – Easterby

Ireland Defence Coach Simon Easterby reviews the Quilter Nations Series win against Australia and looks ahead to the final game against World Champions South Africa at Aviva Stadium on Saturday evening.

Speaking about Ireland’s record victory against the Wallabies he said, “I think Australia have actually gone well during the Rugby Championship. Maybe there’s been a bit of inconsistencies and they’re at the end of a long season for them, they’ve done a lot of travel but I think we’ve beaten a good side.

“We saw how they grew into the Lions series and then into the Rugby Championship where they went away from home and beat teams, so I think we’ll certainly take the positives from the game but also understand we need to get better each week and I think we’ve been doing that across the series of three games so far and that’ll need to be the case this weekend against South Africa.

“You understand that they have strengths that other teams don’t have and you’ve got to find a few weaknesses as well so we need to be better at what we do with and without the ball. That includes our physicality, it includes the ability for us to stop a team scoring tries when they get into our 22 which we weren’t good enough at on the weekend so that’s international rugby and it doesn’t matter who you play, the physicality has to be a given.”

Speaking about the November international winodw Easterby commented, “I think there’s other things to factor into this series, the challenges of going to Chicago, spending time away, dealing with that loss and building resilience in the squad.

“It’s not always going to be perfect, you’re not going to have it your own way all the time, it’s how the group have responded from the disappointment of Chicago of the game itself has been outstanding and I think there’s been plenty of open and honest conversations in the group.

“And it’s no better challenge than South Africa coming to the Aviva on the weekend for us to see if we can put a lot of those things into practice that we’ve spoken about trying to improve on.”