Ireland captain Caelan Doris says a determination to keep doing things “our way” was key in Ireland’s blistering third-quarter performance in Saturday’s 27-22 Six Nations win over England at the Aviva Stadium.
Ireland trailed 10-5 at the break having scored a Jamison Gibson-Park try in response to a score from England debutant Cadan Murley and a penalty and conversion from Marcus Smith.
However, after the break Ireland added tries from Bundee Aki, Tadhg Beirne and Dan Sheehan, as well as a Sam Predergast penalty and two Jack Crowley conversions, to put he game to bed before England hit back with late tries from Tom Curry and Freddie Steward.
It means Ireland are up and running in their pursuit of a third consecutive title with a bonus point win before they head to Scotland this weekend.
“It’s definitely satisfying,” said Doris.
“Momentum is obviously huge in this competition and while you can’t win it in the first round you can lose it, essentially, or dampen your chances quite a bit.”
The free-flowing second-half display was in sharp contrast to much of the play in the Autumn Nations Series, when Ireland lost to New Zealand and laboured to wins over Argentina and Australia, while also beating Fiji.
“I think we showed what we were capable of at times,” said Doris when asked about Ireland’s improved attacking display.
“There was a good 10-day build-up into this and there’s strong belief we have in the plan that ‘Goodie’ (coach Andrew Goodman) has come up with and in our general phase attack as well. We showed it at times there but as we get deeper into the tournament it’s going to need to be a stronger point and we’re going to have to develop it.
“[The message at half-time was] That we need to get back to doing things our way. There was a little bit of a feeling towards the end of the first half that we were going to break them a little bit or that when we were getting into their 22 and scorezone things were going to happen for us if we got a little bit quicker ball and continue to do things our way.”
