Dave Kearney has revealed how Ireland coach Joe Schmidt was very disappointed with Ireland’s first half performance yesterday, despite being only nine points behind England at the time.
England led Ireland 12-3 at the break having outplayed the visitors for the first 40 minutes in an Irish performance reminiscent of Munster hanging on to the coat tails of their European opponents in their prime.
Kearney, playing as a winger in Ireland’s final World Cup warm-up, said that despite the fact that Ireland were still in the game Schmidt was focussed on the mistakes that his team had made in the first half.
Kearney said: “It was just our start, a couple of handling errors and a couple of passes when we got ourselves into good positions – that’s the only thing he really talked about.”
Kearney had every sympathy with Simon Zebo for England’s second try scored by Anthony Watson after the ball was chipped over the Munster flyer’s head in the first half.
Kearney said: “It’s a difficult situation, you are going backwards for it and obviously the attacking team have the advantage, Watson had a good run-up at it.
“It’s never a nice one as a winger or a full-back to take.”