1 week Ago
AN UNFORTUNATE PART of life as a professional sportsperson is that when you experience a day you’d rather forget, you instead have to pore over the painful moments all over again as part of your review process. That was the agenda in Abbotstown yesterday morning as the Ireland squad picked through the pieces of their 10-point defeat to New Zealand. Another important part of the process is for players to take accountability for their own roles in what was an underwhelming team performance, all with the end goal of delivering an improved display when they get back out on the pitch against Argentina on Friday.
“There weren’t really hard chats, just honest chats,” explains winger Mack Hansen. “And we came to the conclusion that it wasn’t good enough and also that it just wasn’t us. “We kind of just tested each other on our mental resilience.
We’ve been really good at that at times, the best in the world really, in terms of getting back to zero and then playing on regardless of what happens in the game. And we felt we let a few key moments slip at the weekend. So we are looking to nullify that and it’s a new week.
It’s exciting.” It was an uncharacteristically sloppy performance from Farrell’s men, with their 21 handling errors and 13 penalties conceded playing right into New Zealand’s hands. “I think the hard bit was it was a lot of unforced errors for us.
It wasn’t like we were getting our roles wrong or anything like that. It was just silly penalties..
. We’re a team that’s really good at keeping our penalties down. That’s a big strong point of our game, not giving away these stupid penalties, not giving teams access, we’re great with ball in hand, it was just one of those weeks where everything just didn’t seem to go away.
“You have days like that unfortunately and looking back at it, not an excuse at all. We’re not saying, oh, look, it’s one of those days, let’s not review it. We reviewed it hard, reviewed it as a tough loss, which it was, but coming out of the review we know that that’s just not us, that’s not our mentality and we’ve got to reel that back in and can’t stay too focused on it now.
We’ve got to move on and make sure it doesn’t happen again.” Friday’s game was Hansen’s first Test appearance since last year’s World Cup quarter-final defeat to the same opposition, with a shoulder injury ruling the Connacht man out of the Six Nations and Ireland’s summer tour to South Africa. Before that lengthy lay-off Hansen had established himself as a mainstay in Farrell’s team, but his time on the sidelines – and the form of those who excelled in his absence – opened up doubts as to whether he’d be able to play his way back into the side.
“You get to a period of being injured, especially as long as I was, that you never know if you’re going to get the opportunity again. “Things like that kind of go through your head, especially with the way the guys were playing, sill winning Six Nations and winning tours when I was away. A lot of guys really stepped up and played great, like Nashy [Calvin Nash] and Jamie [Osborne] and those sort of guys coming through.
So yeah, things like that do go through your head and to get it again was just it was another dream come true almost. “It’s not like I was out of the team and things were going badly,” he continues. “It’s a hard one to kind of navigate through.
Saying that, obviously very happy for how the team and how the guys were going, but on the other hand you are thinking from time-to-time, ‘Ah Jeez, will I get my shot again?’ To be able to get it has been a privilege.” Hansen admits the nervous tension he felt around his Ireland return matched that of his first cap back in 2022. In such a scenario, any player just wants to get a couple of good involvements nice and early, but Hansen found it difficult to settle into the contest as Ireland struggled to find any real cohesion in their play.
“But you get games like that unfortunately. I tried to flip my mindset a bit and just try and get my hands on the ball as much as I could. I feel like I did that in the last 10/15, maybe a little bit more involved, but now I’m working on just doing that for the whole 80.
It felt like it just didn’t come my way, sort of.” Another challenge of this November window is the new directive around the kick-chase, with officials being told to clamp down on ‘kick escorting.’ With the directive brought in to encourage more aerial contests it’s an important one for Hansen given his role in the Irish team, and so far, he’s on board with the change.
“I actually am, yeah. It makes my job a lot harder for sure..
. [Previously] You’re almost expected to catch it, now with that gone it’s a real 50/50 on who’s going to be getting it. “When I’m receiving it, obviously I want to be going up and winning those balls but then it gives me a really good chance to go and destruct their ball as well.
“It’s not like it’s a real one-sided thing, it’s both teams just competing and I think it’s going to be exciting to see these aerial spectacles going on throughout the weeks.”.
