Ireland find their mojo as Sam Prendergast finds his feet in England win

Forget Netflix, forget fireworks, forget big screens and forget forced-fun entirely.

Trust in the game, in the tradition, in the atmosphere, in all the years of history and the generations of memory that lie silted in the imagination of thousands.

Leave it alone and let them at it. On days like this all you need is a field full of athletes and the tradition that binds everyone else looking on.

Really, that’s it. What you get in the best of cases is this, a contest that was taut as piano wire until Ireland snapped England’s resistance in a storming second half. The fans loved it, of course, and they responded in songs and roars and they were happily swallowed up by the first night of February as they spilled into the capital’s streets.

Beyond the occasion, the sporting consequences are potentially enormous.

Simon Easterby belied a reputation for flinty froideur built up over a quarter of a century to celebrate in the coaches’ box with due delight.

The camera panned to Andy Farrell in the stand masquerading as any ordinary punter, but whatever the level of his residual influence, this was an outstanding result for the interim head coach and his players.

Momentum is treasured in this competition and Ireland have it now.

Victory for Ireland in Dublin 💪☘️#GuinnessM6N pic.twitter.com/WLPpVCRNzv

— Guinness Men's Six Nations (@SixNationsRugby) February 1, 2025

What’s more, Ireland did it after a first-half when visiting appetites were insatiable.

Players and coaches love to talk about creating the right pictures for referees, but too often the Irish images in the first 40 minutes were out of sync.

It was like one of those dubbed movies that used to bloat the schedules, where the words and the pictures were on different clocks.

Passes were pulled back here but cannoned off shoulders rather than nestling in chests. Players over-ran team-mates’ intentions.

And when the pass was sympathetic, it was still too often fumbled.

Much of this was the result of breathless English pressure, applied in a deadly fusion of aggression and accuracy.

Their form is uncertain, their coaching ticket fell apart during the summer and the main man is one defeat away from ominous headlines looming again, but this was not the performance of a side stooped by pressures.

And that meant bad news for Ireland, and the persistence of the halting game that marred the autumn window.

Their designs on a freer game appeared in tantalising glimpses, before being submerged by the next English wave.

Numerous times they almost engineered dazzling moves, but the pass would go forward, or too far back, or not on time.

And with each infringement, big England arms would shoot upwards. They were taking the wins wherever they came, gathering every little treasure like beachcombers, and trusting that it would add up to enough come the final whistle.

They couldn’t sustain the tempo, though, and nor could they quell Ireland’s talents, with Sam Prendergast leading the eventual awakening.

For as long as he plays like this, Prendergast will be the story. And when he doesn’t, he’ll be the story too because that is the lot of the Irish out-half – or the few that are as good as him, anyway.

And he was good here, on a day that he was ruthlessly targeted by the opposition and when his kicking wobbled, too.

But he left the scene of every drama with the unruffled air of a man going out to bring in the bins.

Maybe the most telling episode in his day came in the 56th minute. England’s discipline, lax from the outset, was threatening to unravel, and from Ireland’s tenth penalty of the match, Prendergast wanted to kick for the posts.

He was placing the ball on the tee even as match referee Ben O’Keeffe was asking Caelan Doris what his team wanted to do.

This was only a few moments after he had failed to convert Bundee Aki’s terrific score from tight to the left touchline.

He was zero from two after that, but he swept the penalty over confidently to put Ireland into the lead for the first time in the match.

There were some mistakes, and English defenders were keen on getting as close to him as permissible – and then a bit closer again. He was clipped early by a white onrusher as he cleared a ball, and as he fell it looked like he briefly extended his arms, in the universal gesture that says ‘What the f***?’ But it was only brief. His senior career hasn’t been long but he has learned enough to know that this is how it will be.

So he got on with finding a good performance amid the churning blur of a Six Nations contest that really was true to the most unforgiving traditions of this old tournament.

He looked uncomfortable against the clock and pushed his conversion wide after Jamison Gibson-Park’s try from a very sympathetic angle.

The 60-second shot-clock starts as soon as a try is scored, and despite the criticism, it speeds up a game that regularly needs rescuing from dull delays.

This contest didn’t need much outside intervention, and the crowd duly responded to a terrific contest in the way they didn’t to the furious efforts of the IRFU to build a pre-match atmosphere.

Faithful to the old ways, most fans ignored the lure of big screens to watch the Scotland-Italy game and came in a few minutes before kick-off.

The anthems were sung and then we got a verse of the Fields of Athenry seconds before kick-off, too.

But the best occasions aren’t forced by white-board planning or turning the acoustics up to 11.

They depend on the action – and this was monumental.

Ryan Baird was the other newish face to get his chance, and he did enough to suggest that a talent long spoken of as promising is ready to emerge – part of a gathering green force that in one evening, cast out winter and made us think of longer, brighter days.

* This article was originally published on Extra.ie.