I made a stupid mistake and Ireland made us pay dearly

Published on Saturday 23 February 2008 22:52

ANOTHER day when stupid errors cost us dear, another day that has left us feeling pretty sick about things.

This was a very different kind of defeat than the one in Cardiff a fortnight ago.

In Cardiff we created nothing and offered nothing. Here we had lots of the game but didn't have the composure to execute. The terrible, game-turning blunders took the match away from us.

I've got to admit my own part in that. The incident involving me and Denis Leamy was an error in judgment. It was stupid of me. There was no call for it and I regret it. All I was trying to do was get the ball back off him quickly but there was no need to. We had the penalty and I should have been happy with that. Instead I grappled with Leamy, he went down and I was done. I didn't hit him or anything. I didn't try to punch him. But the touch judge saw a swinging arm and the momentum we had at that moment was lost.

The try that killed us came just after the start of the second half. Another mistake. We'd missed a tackle for Ireland's first try and now we failed to take the kick-off just ahead of Ronan O'Gara's cross-kick to Marcus Horan. That was maddening because even though we were behind on the scoreboard at half-time we still felt we had a chance of winning. Ireland hadn't caused us too many problems. We caused ourselves the problems. Ireland got about three soft scores, scores that they didn't have to work all that hard to get. Anything we get these days we have to work like dogs for. That was the difference between the sides. They gave us nothing, we gave them everything.

I was happy about a number of things. We tried to play rugby for a start. I feel much better about this performance than I did about what we produced in Cardiff. That left us cold but there were plenty of positives in this.

It might seem a bit daft to say that given the points difference at the end but we caused their lineout terrible trouble, we had big chunks of possession but we have composure issues inside our opponent's 22 at the moment and they are absolutely killing us.

Psychologically, we might be thinking that since we're not creating many try-scoring opportunities that we have to nail every one that comes our way and that piles the pressure high. We get anxious. I don't know, maybe we got to Ireland's line yesterday and thought "right, we must score now because we might not get too many more chances". A bit of desperation sets in and it leads to mistakes.

Then Ireland go up the other end, we make a mistake, and they've another seven points on the board. That can rip the heart out of you.

I came off after about 65 minutes and got a lovely reception from the Croke Park crowd. Lovely in that 70,000 people booed me as I went. It wasn't great but, hey, it's not like it's the first time I've been jeered on a foreign ground. Croke Park is a stunning stadium, a real thing of beauty, but I have to say the atmosphere was a bit strange. It was pretty quiet for a long time which was maybe a tribute to us and the amount of ball we had. They were pretty noisy when I was replaced, though. In fairness to them they found their voice then.

The dressing room afterwards was like a casualty ward. Jim Hamilton has a suspected broken leg, Kelly Brown has damaged ribs, Scott Macleod and Euan Murray have problems with their shoulders. It was grim. I feel for Jim. It's terrible for him. The doc was there examining him and saying that it might not definitely be broken and he was saying I know it is, I know it is. God knows how the other lads are going to be for the England game.

Mike Blair did most of the talking afterwards. He just told us that we can't make these mistakes and expect to get anything out of games. We made it easy for Ireland in many ways. But there was an upside which there wasn't in Cardiff. We played a more expansive game, which we're not used to, and asked questions of Ireland where in Cardiff we asked none. We just have to play without the cock-ups the next time.

I'm heading back to Perpignan now. We've got a game against Dax on Saturday and I'm looking forward to that. I'm also looking forward to getting away from the Scotland scene for a week.

Nothing against anybody but I think it'll do us good just to have a look at things from a distance, to take a step back and have a right good think about where we go from here.