Ireland prop Finlay Bealham has vowed that his side will bounce back from last night’s bitterly disappointing 23-13 defeat to New Zealand at the Aviva Stadium.
Andy Farrell’s men face Argentina next Friday before hosting Fiji and Australia later this month, as they look to recover from an uncharacteristically poor performance in their biggest game of the Autumn Nations Series.
On a subdued night in Dublin, the quality of the game itself failed to live up to the billing, as Ireland were second best throughout, with the All Black deservedly claiming victory.
The Ireland squad will return to camp tomorrow to pick through the bones of the wreckage before they turn their attention to the visit of Felipe Contepomi’s dangerous Pumas.
And Bealham insists that Ireland will deliver an appropriate response at home.
“Everyone is obviously bitterly disappointed,” the Connacht man said.
“Look, there’s still three games to go in this series, and we’ll dust ourselves off. We’re not feeling sorry for ourselves, we’ll analyse it properly and another big Test next week. Back on the horse.
“(I’m) Confident (we can turn it around). We’ve got world-class coaches, world-class players, and we want to analyse it properly and see where it went wrong and things we can improve on.
“I’m sure, knowing the group, we’ll fix a lot of that.”
Bealham, who was promoted to the starting lineup in place of the injured Tadhg Furlong, is in line for another start next week, if the Wexford native does not recover in time.
The tighthead ended up playing the majority of the game last night after his replacement Tom O’Toole was forced off with a head injury shortly after joining the action.
“I got a mouthful of water, and then unfortunately for Tom he went down and I knew I was back on. I tried to get my head around that,” Bealham continued.
“It was a tough, tough game physically. I was blowing a bit at the end but it was tough.
“They’re (New Zealand) right up there, they’re a world-class team with some unbelievable individuals. Every time you play them you know it’s going to be an absolute war, and that was a war again. They were the better team on the night.”
Bealham, like his head coach Farrell, knows there is plenty of scope for improvement because another such sloppy, disjointed and ill-disciplined display will cost them against an Argentina outfit, who will sense vulnerability in the Irish ranks.
“A few areas, like discipline and a few things in the tackle,” Bealham added.
“It’s hard to remember everything from the game, we’ll look back on it and analyse it and fix it for next week.
“They were really good in terms of ruck pressure, and we couldn’t get into our flow attack wise. Like I said, we’ll analyse all that and look to fix it next week. Argentina will be a very tough Test next Friday.
“It was a disappointing dressing room. It’s always tough to lose at home. We got into a huddle and just said ‘No sulking’.
“We’ll get on with it and learn from the mistakes we made. We have an incredibly tough test match next Friday and we’ll look to fix the stuff we can be better at.”