Trust the process, and trust our fine young out-halves
Ireland beat England with a powerful second-half display during the opening round of the Six Nations at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday evening.
Both Irish out-halves played their part in the victory, and unfortunately I feel it necessary to point out that you can praise one of those players without bashing the other.
Provincial bias can be evident when the Irish team is selected and it's fair to want your province’s players in the team. However, you can push the agenda and positive contributions of your preferred selection in any position without having to negatively remark on the other guy.
Sam Prendergast is an incredible talent. He’ll turn 22 during this championship, yet he’s impressively mature both on and off the pitch and has quite a confident yet relaxed manner in front of the camera.
His Six Nations championship debut wasn’t his strongest performance in the green jersey. I’m sure with his own standards he’ll reflect and appraise his own performance accordingly. His kicking is a real strength, but there were miscues scattered throughout his performance at the Aviva.
Prendergast usually puts on a spiral kicking exhibition. He didn’t connect as he normally would on two occasions, but in truth they weren’t big errors.
Prendergast was facing a fired-up English side that selected three openside flankers, effectively. His attacking ball was severely disrupted, meaning he and his Irish teammates had to solve problems throughout the game.
They were successful occasionally. A flurry of attacking threats in one passage of play led to the Marcus Smith sin-bin period and eventually led to Ireland’s first try in the second quarter of the game.
Sam was inaccurate with his conversion, a blip from his usual reliability off the kicking