For one thing there are five points for a try now

For one thing, there are five points for a try now.”But the most important thing tonight was that we won. “But the game has changed so much it’s very difficult to make comparisons between players nowadays and players gone by. At the age of 26, and after 48 caps, Paterson now has 303 points to his name – 30 more than Irvine amassed in his career as a full-back of supreme distinction, but still a long-way short of Gavin Hastings’ record haul of 667.”It’s always nice to achieve these things,” Paterson reflected. Replacements: C van der Linde (Cheetahs) for Andrews, 71; G Britz (Cheetahs) for Burger, 16-24.Referee: P Honiss (New Zealand). It is for The 39 Steps that Perth’s most celebrated son, John Buchan, is best remembered.

Chris Paterson went one better on the outskirts of the ancient Scottish capital on Saturday night. With three tries, 11 conversions and one penalty, the Edinburgh wing took 40 points – scoring steps in a non-contest of an international that would have been more appropriately showcased on a cricket pitch than in a football stadium. Replacements: M Horan (Munster) for Corrigan, 69; E Miller (Leinster) for O’Connor, 75.South Africa: P Montgomery (Newport-Gwent Dragons); B Paulse( Western Province), M Joubert (Western Province), D Barry (Western Province), A Willemse (Lions); J van der Westhuyzen (NEC), F du Preez (Blue Bulls); O du Randt (Cheetahs), J Smit (Natal Sharks, capt), E Andrews (Western Province), B Botha (Blue Bulls), V Matfield (Blue Bulls), S Burger (Western Province), AJ Venter (Natal Sharks), J van Niekerk (Western Province). They have won every game.Ireland: G Dempsey (Leinster), G Murphy (Leicester), B O’Driscoll (Leinster, capt), S Horgan (Leinster), D Hickie (Leinster), R O’Gara Munster), P Stringer (Munster), R Corrigan (Leinster), S Byrne (Leinster), J Hayes (Munster), M O’Kelly (Leinster), P O’Connell (Munster), S Easterby (Llanelli Scarlets), J O’Connor (Wasps), A Foley (Munster). This was the eighth time in his career that he had been in charge of a Test involving Ireland. “He is a young guy and I do not want to destroy his enthusiasm or make him reluctant to do what he is supposed to do and have him standing off at the breakdown.

I will sit down with him during the week and we will have a chat.”White felt the breakdown was not handled consistently by the referee, Paul Honiss, but the New Zealand official is consistent in another way. Schalk Burger, their prodigiously talented open-side, picked up another yellow card for slowing things down illegally.”Whether it was legal or illegal I cannot come down too harshly on Schalk because he went to make that tackle, otherwise they would have scored,” said White. This win ended four decades of misery for Irish sides against South Africa. The last and only time Ireland won was back in 1965.South Africa have urgent problems with the Test against England at Twickenham six days away.

“And I think what was said in South Africa in the summer about Irish rugby was a bit upsetting, especially when they were asking: ‘What have Ireland ever done?’” Murphy, whose first-half ankle tap that felled Percy Montgomery with the Irish line at the Springbok full-back’s mercy sparked the seismic shock, added: “Maybe they will be eating a lot of those words tonight.”The Boks probably choked on them. “I remember Clive Woodward saying we were two years behind them. I took that as a compliment.” The gap can be measured in months now. To beat the Boks you have to stand up to them physically, match fire with fire After that you can play rugby. And I feel we matched them today.” But they have done even more than that, according to O’Sullivan, a man most certainly not given to hyperbole.”We’ve been chasing England for years and I think we are getting closer,” he said.

The passion is still there, the pride too, but now when the green-shirted crazies have a go their every action is cloaked in the clinical and the pragmatic.The howls of protest when Eddie O’Sullivan whisked his cr? de la cr? away for 10 weeks at the start of the season in order to build bodies, confidence and a structure to raise Ireland to ever higher levels, will rapidly turn into cries of congratulations and pleas for more of the same.”There was a lot of flak about the 10 weeks,” said O’Sullivan, “but we had been to South Africa and we had seen what we had to do We struggled physically against them We knew we had to get stronger in order to compete. It has worked – over the years they have pulled off famous victories against all odds – but those triumphs have generally served only to paper over the cracks.Now it can be stated with confidence that this wondrous tradition is undergoing a makeover. While other sides have concentrated on the more prosaic aspects of Test preparation, they have pumped themselves full of Celtic pride and counted on raw courage to see them through. The shock waves from Ireland’s momentous win over the Tri-Nations champions are still reverberating around the Emerald Isle, creating a wave of expectation that only a fool would dismiss.
For too long the Irish have relied on passion to underpin performance. “It’s great to be captain, to score the tries and get the result but we can’t get carried away It will be a lot tougher next week.”.