For the second time this year Wales notched a win over the No 2 ranked team in the world and brought to an end their proud run of nine successive home victories. It also proved Wales are on the right track to produce some good performances in the ‘Pool of Death’ at the World Cup.
“It was a good performance. There was a little bit of rustiness as well, a bit of heart-stopping stuff and I joked in the box, with three minutes to go, that ‘the next three minutes are going to be hell, aren’t they?’ And they were!” admitted Gatland.
“With that sort of experience, and a strong side out, it’s a performance we know we are capable of. The whole focus of this campaign so far in preparation was to win a big game away from home, because we’ve got to go to Twickenham for a couple of big games.
“So to beat the number two team ranked team in the world was good. I know it was close at the end, and that Ireland could have won it and that would have been heartbreaking for us, but potentially it could have been a lot more comfortable for us as well.
“I don’t think Ireland play a lot of rugby and I thought they were really narrow at times. When they play that game effectively, and use their one-off runners and get some success at cross kicks, that’s what they are good at doing.
“They are good at pressurising you and forcing you into turnovers and building a score. But we didn’t feel like we were troubled at all in the wide channels. They got some turnovers and some kick returns which put us under a bit of pressure, but when they played with the ball in hand we didn’t feel like we were under a huge amount of pressure.
“They are a quality side, but we have worked pretty hard on our defence in the last couple of weeks and used that as a focus because they blew us away in that first game up front and we needed to address that from the defensive and breakdown points of view and I thought we did a good job.
“Ireland have got a style and a game plan that has been incredibly successful for them. It’s sometimes hard to move away from that and I understand why you would continue with it.
“Sometimes the criticism of us is we play too much rugby. Sometimes you have just got to keep it simple, kick the ball on and put some pressure on them. I am not being critical of Ireland because what Joe Schmidt and that Irish team have achieved is absolutely outstanding.
“They have got a formula that has been successful for them and I’m sure they will tweak a few things and look to try and add things to the game. I’m sure they are like us in that we haven’t brought everything to the table and are keeping things behind for the next few weeks because there is so much analysis going on.
“If we had shown everything that we are looking to do, then there’s not going to be any surprise for that first big game against England at Twickenham.”
The win moved Wales above Pool A rivals England in the World Rugby rankings and moved than made up for the home defeat against the Irish at the Millennium Stadium three weeks ago. Not that Gatland is worried about the world rankings at this stage.
“Going ahead of England doesn’t make any difference to us. We came here to play against the number two team in the world and we are the only side that have beaten Ireland in their last 15 games,” said Gatland.
“We weren’t speaking about the rankings or whatever. We just know how close teams can be. The way the game is at the moment you can win by 15 or 20 points and the team you are playing against change their game-plan and do things differently and you can lose by the same margin the following week.
“The rankings don’t really mean anything. It’s just for bragging rights, that’s all.”
Gatland admitted that his squad still has a lot of rugby work to put into their preparation before the World Cup kicks-off and the fact that the win in Dublin came off such limited rugby preparation was another source of pride for him and his coaching team.
“We haven’t had a lot of rugby together and we did a lot of hard work last week. We had one training session on Thursday and a captain’s run on Friday, so to give that kind of performance without having a full Test week’s performance was what I was most pleased about,” he added.
“We’ve kept saying that at some stage we will kick more into the rugby, which we will do.
I thought Ireland were good in the air, while we negated their driving threat and put some pressure on by us driving as well. Those are things we have been working on.
“The defensive line-speed was a massive step up from the first game, so that was pleasing. I thought, apart from a couple of silly penalties, we looked comfortable defensively and we just felt we weren’t under pressure from what they threw at us as long as we kept our shape and kept our discipline.
“I thought it was a very good performance from a lot of players in that starting XV and the impact from the bench was pleasing as well. I know Rhys Priestland has had a lot of criticism but he came on and controlled the game really well in that last 10 or 15 minutes, which was pleasing.
“Overall, there are lots of things to work on, but to get the win is a big confidence boost for us. It was a pretty good performance.”
