Why Irish are quietly confident of beating Boks
SPOTLIGHT: Ireland’s improvement in the Nations Series since their defeat to New Zealand puts them in good stead to topple the Springboks, according to assistant coach Simon Easterby.
Following the defeat in Chicago, Ireland made steady progress defeating Japan 41-10 before making a statement against the Wallabies this past weekend, dismantling Joe Schmidt’s side 46-19.
Their final mission in 2025 is against South Africa at the Aviva Stadium.
The back-to-back World Champions have won 21 of their 25 matches since their 2023 World Cup triumph in Paris.
However, one of their four defeats was to Ireland on South African soil in July 2024.
The two countries have built an all-green rivalry over the past decade, with Ireland holding the bragging rights, having recorded five wins from their eight matches played since 2016, with two of those victories being on South African soil.
Easterby is confident with his side’s upward trajectory but admitted they’ll have to deliver their best performance of the season to topple the Boks.
“We’ll certainly take the positives from the [Australia] 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,” Easterby told reporters this week.
“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.”
Easterby rubbished any claims that the result against the Boks will define Ireland’s Nations Series success.
“I wouldn’t say that. I think there are 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,” he said.
“It’s not always going to be perfect, you’re not going to have it your own way all the time.
“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.”
Source @PA
