Andy Farrell did not arrive at the press table at Twickenham wearing the smile of a coach who had just put 42 points on England. The Ireland head coach sat down, paused over the question of where the result ranked in his career achievements, and answered with the quietest line of his Six Nations campaign.
"Well, I don't know — I suppose we'll have a good think about that whilst we're reminiscing later on this evening," Farrell said. "It's a special day. To come here and perform like that — we'd obviously be delighted with that. But it's even more so than that for us. I thought the respect that the lads showed for one another out there on the field was immense. The respect that they showed for the jersey and what it meant to them, and respect for the Irish people, really."
The 42-21 score line said something simple — Ireland had played one of the more complete away performances of the Farrell era — but the coach's framing was about something quieter. "To learn some lessons and grow as a group and as a team was the overriding feeling for me," he said. The Six Nations record book will note the score; Farrell's own internal record book is keeping a different one.
Stand-in captain Caelan Doris was less philosophical. "It's big," he said when asked what the day meant for the squad's belief. "I spoke to you guys yesterday about Paris being a reference point. We're hopefully going to see a pretty steep incline in terms of performances, and I think this will now be a reference point that we look back on as a proper good performance that's given us a lot of belief."
That belief, Doris insisted, had not gone anywhere — even through a sticky autumn and a Paris defeat that had become a totem for everything the Ireland squad was supposedly missing. "I've also mentioned to you guys that at the core of what we're doing in training and camp there has been belief still at the core. I think you saw some of that through how we played today." The stand-in skipper also paid tribute to the Twickenham travelling support. "It was just an unbelievable atmosphere out there. You talk about inspiring the nation and getting the Irish people behind us — and hopefully that brought both the people here and at home a bit of joy today. We definitely enjoyed it."
Farrell's tactical read of the game was that the lessons of Paris had been carried into Twickenham and made the difference at the start, when the match was at its most volatile. "We got told we needed to dampen them down," Farrell said. "And rightly so, because we were here two years ago when England lost to Scotland — and they played it outstandingly well, and played some outstanding rugby on that day as well. So there's a lesson to be learned now for us. But more so, the lesson from Paris and us growing as a group is the key. It's about doing the things that you promised each other that you were going to do — and be free, get out of your own way, and just let go, and play the game that's in front of you, and have no distractions. We did that — and what that accumulated to was some fantastic rugby that was broken-field stuff. We got them on the break. We made line breaks from deep in our own half, and ground it out as well on their line."
It was the small details — chase-back tackles, line-saving touches — that Farrell singled out as the marker of the performance. "The telling parts of Stuart McCloskey chasing back, Marcus being able to put him in touch, just shows the fight," he said. "And the Rob Baloucoune one on the far side there just shows the fight and the spirit that these lads have got for one another and what it means to them."
Asked about the social-media abuse some of his players had absorbed during the week, Farrell offered the closest the conference got to a smile. "I've not been reading," he said. "Apparently that's life, isn't it? It's not my life, anyway. It's certainly not these lads' lives. So we tend to not take it on and just try and blow forward."
The coach reserved his warmest praise for stand-in captain Caelan Doris. "I thought he had his best game in a good while. He was immense — that's Caelan at his best, isn't it? How he led from the front and got us over the gain line was outstanding. We could 100 per cent have two minutes on every single person out there. Jamison and Stu McCloskey, Josh, Tadhg — you know, you'd be cruel to leave people out, but the growth in the team is with the likes of Rob Baloucoune and Stuart McCloskey dominating at this type of level in such a big game like that."
The Twickenham win, in the end, was not a referendum on England — though it doubled as one. It was a referendum on Ireland's ability to deliver under exactly the kind of week that has caused them trouble in recent years. Farrell, in his quiet way, said the only thing he needed to say about that. The respect was there. The belief was there. The lessons had been carried in. And for one Saturday at Twickenham, the scoreboard reflected all three.
