Ireland captain Brian O’Driscoll was quick to praise a gutsy Georgia outfit after they came desperately close to wrecking his team’s World Cup hopes in Bordeaux.
Possession-starved Ireland had to dig deep, ending the game on the back foot as Georgia launched a late push for a match-winning try, but O’Driscoll and his team-mates did enough over the first hour to chalk up their second Pool D win.
Converted tries from Rory Best and Girvan Dempsey saved Ireland from what would have been the biggest shock in the history of the World Cup and the underwhelming performance from the men in green has only added more pressure into the mix for Friday’s showdown with France.
Disappointingly, it was the second time in six days that Ireland have failed to play to their potential and the overriding feeling for O’Driscoll afterwards was one of relief.
“That was a very tough game. We didn’t play wonderfully again but you’ve got to give a huge amount of credit to the Georgians tonight.
“They really came out and obviously put a huge amount of pressure on us, particularly up front. And once they were within a sniff, they grew in confidence,” admitted the Irish skipper.
“When you’re within one score, anything can happen but we showed some good resolve to hold off at the end and some good defence.”
The next few days will be crucial for Ireland as they try to right the wrongs of their first two outings and focus on raising their performance levels with two must-win games looming large on the horizon against France and Argentina.
“We’ll have to assess things and obviously we’re going to need a considerably better performance against the French. We’re still in the competition but it’s looking likely that we’re going to need to win our last two games.
“We knew we were going to have to pull out big performances to come out of this group and nothing’s changed,” O’Driscoll added.
– Click here to listen to a short snippet from Brian O’Driscoll from the post-match press conference –
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