{"id":311220,"date":"2026-02-22T09:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T09:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/311220\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T09:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T09:27:08","slug":"we-proved-a-lot-of-people-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/311220\/","title":{"rendered":"‘We proved a lot of people wrong’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stuart McCloskey was almost stuck for words following Ireland’s stunning victory over England but did admit that proving some of the team’s doubters wrong was especially satisfying.<\/p>\n

The Ulster centre was, for the third week running, one of the best in show for Andy Farrell’s men, who lost heavily to France in round one and scraped past Italy last weekend.<\/p>\n

In London, the 33-year-old made 15 carries and a line break, which led to Rob Baloucoune’s try, racked up 14 completed tackles and his late chase-down of Marcus Smith as the full-back raced up field typified the nature of the performance in the record 42-21 victory<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I don’t really know what to feel,” said the 33-year-old.<\/p>\n

“It’s so soon after the game with obviously absolute elation.<\/p>\n

“It was a great performance, I think. We proved a lot of people wrong.<\/p>\n

“We probably proved to ourselves more importantly what we can do when we get stuff right.<\/p>\n

“[It was] more we wanted to prove to ourselves how good we are. Obviously a lot of things didn’t go right over the last two rounds.<\/p>\n

“Some went well and we got it right. I thought we looked really good, but it just didn’t really piece it all together.<\/p>\n

“I thought today we pieced a lot of what we wanted to do together and I thought it was pretty good all round.”<\/p>\n

\"21<\/p>\n

McCloskey (above), who won his 26th cap, made his debut a decade ago under Joe Schmidt at this venue but competition from the likes of Bundee Aki, Garry Ringrose and Robbie Henshaw restricted his chances.<\/p>\n

“I probably didn’t think I’d still be here in 10 years, no matter how well it went,” reflected the Bangor man.<\/p>\n

“And there’s tough times in there but I’m glad I stuck at it to get to experience days like this now.<\/p>\n

“It’s class. I said to myself a few years ago, I’m just going to enjoy every game I get from now on.<\/p>\n

“I obviously haven’t played as much as I would have liked over the years.<\/p>\n

“Not to turn my nose up at how many caps I have, but I would have loved more. And I think at the start, I probably didn’t enjoy it, I was just feeling the pressure.<\/p>\n

“Now, [it’s] let’s take every chance I have and try to enjoy everything I do out here. It’s amazing to do it in that jersey, what it represents and do it for the team that we have in there.<\/p>\n

“My body feels really good, as it has done for a while but when you play more, you get more experience.<\/p>\n

“I’ve seen most of the things that can happen on the rugby field now. I probably have played the most professional games, or close to the most professional games, on our team.<\/p>\n

“I’m just confident in what I do. As long as my body stays in pretty good nick, I’m pretty confident I can do this for a while longer.”<\/p>\n

\"21<\/p>\n

On that defensive play when he chased down Smith and dumped the Quins back over the line (above), McCloskey said: “I probably ran back in hoped more than expectation.<\/p>\n

“As I got closer, it was like, ‘oh flip, I’m actually going to get him’. But yeah, I was absolutely cooked after it.<\/p>\n

“I was basically a body bag for the last five minutes but thankful the game was won.<\/p>\n

“That’s one of the things we said going into the day.<\/p>\n

“Be all in for everybody, be in every moment. That’s the first minute, the 80th minute. As long as we fight for each other, whatever the result was, we’d be happy.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stuart McCloskey was almost stuck for words following Ireland’s stunning victory over England but did admit that proving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-311220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}