Goal saved the Series, says Tohill

Ireland manager Anthony Tohill has admitted that Bernard Brogan’s late goal ‘saved the Series’ for his side.

Ireland were staring down an 18-point deficit and potential embarrassment when Footballer of the Year Brogan struck the goal that inspired a late comeback from the home side.

“The goal might just have saved the series. I think if we hadn’t got it we were in a pretty bad position,” conceded Tohill, the Ireland manager.

“We really needed that goal, I think we were 20 points down at the time playing not the way we wanted to play to put it mildly.

“It brought us into it, it brought the crowd into it and it led to us getting a bit of a strong run at it at the end of the game to leave the series alive, to leave us coming out of a massive hole we were in.”

“We are sitting nicely now knowing that we have played quite poorly. I think it sets us up nicely now for the second Test.”

Tohill conceded that little had gone right for his side on the night, but he was delighted with the pride his players showed in in the final minutes.

“We seemed to be very nervous, we seemed to be very jittery in possession. We made a lot of mistakes, a lot more mistakes than we would like to have made.

“it took us a long time to find our feet in the game and credit to Australia for the way they played, they made it very, very difficult for us.

“But our lads showed at the end of the fourth quarter what they can do when they put their minds to it.

“They pushed on and credit too them. They showed a lot of pride and passion at the end of the game and got us out of the hole.”

Steven McDonnell, the Ireland captain, conceded that the soccer-style tactics the Irish players adopted had not worked in the night.

“I don’t think the soccer quite never came off for us to be honest,” he said.

“We were very nervous and very jittery at times and the ball was spilling a lot on the ground, but a lot was to do with the conditions. It was a very slippy surface and a lot of our ball handling was not as good as it should have been.

“We are more comfortable with the ball in hand and we would be hoping for next weekend that that’s the way we will play.”