{"id":311373,"date":"2026-02-22T11:51:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T11:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/311373\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T11:51:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T11:51:10","slug":"im-glad-i-stuck-at-it-to-get-to-experience-days-like-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/311373\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I’m glad I stuck at it to get to experience days like this’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Ciar\u00e1n Kennedy<\/p>\n

Reports from Twickenham<\/p>\n

STUART McCLOSKEY, FOR so long the man who couldn\u2019t force his way into Test contention, is now Ireland\u2019s Mr Reliable. It\u2019s tough to single out individual performances after such a complete team effort by Ireland in Twickenham yesterday, but once again, the Ulster centre stood out with a series of excellent contributions.<\/p>\n

McCloskey has been feeling good about his game for a while, and yesterday his efforts were central to one of the great Ireland wins under Andy Farrell.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a great performance. We proved a lot of people wrong,\u201d McCloskey said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe probably proved to ourselves more importantly what we can do when we get stuff right.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCloskey was asked if proving the doubters wrong had been a source of motivation this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably more we wanted to prove to ourselves how good we are. And obviously a lot of things didn\u2019t go right over the last two rounds. Some went well and we got it right. I thought we looked really good, but it just didn\u2019t really piece it all together.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut 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

\"stuart-mccloskey-is-tackled-by-ollie-chessum-and-ollie-lawrence\"
\n Ireland’s Stuart McCloskey is tackled by England’s Ollie Chessum and Ollie Lawrence. Ben Brady \/ INPHO<\/p>\n

Ben Brady \/ INPHO \/ INPHO\n<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone was telling me it\u2019s the most we\u2019ve ever scored against England at home. So, amazing. I didn\u2019t expect it at the start of the day, if I\u2019m being pretty honest. But it was great. I think we put a lot of stuff together, as I said. And what a day!\u201d<\/p>\n

The 33-year-old was outstanding with the ball in his hands, but his performance will be remembered for the lung-busting chase back and tackle on Marcus Smith in the second half.<\/p>\n

\u201cI probably ran back and hoped more than the expectation. And as I got closer, it was like, \u2018Oh flip, I\u2019m actually going to get him\u2019. But yeah, I was absolutely cooked after it. I was basically a body bag for the last five minutes but thankful the game was won.\u201d<\/p>\n

That moment was singled out by Farrell as the Ireland head coach summed him his thoughts on the team effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s one of the things we said going into the day,\u201d McCloskey added.<\/p>\n

\u201cBe all in for everybody, be in every moment. That\u2019s the first minute, the 80th minute. As long as we fight for each other, whatever the result was, we\u2019d be happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contributions are like that are what make McCloskey look indispensable to this at the moment.\n<\/p>\n

I probably didn\u2019t think I\u2019d still be here in 10 years, no matter how well it went. And there\u2019s tough times in there. But I\u2019m glad I stuck at it to get to experience days like this now.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a strange one. My body feels really good, as it has done for a while but when you play more, you get more experience. I\u2019ve 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, and I\u2019m just confident in what I do. As long as my body stays in pretty good nick, I\u2019m pretty confident I can do this for a while longer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I said to myself a few years ago, I\u2019m just going to enjoy every game I get from now on,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cI obviously haven\u2019t played as much as I would have liked over the years. 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\u2019t enjoy it, I was just feeling the pressure.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, let\u2019s take every chance I have and try to enjoy everything I do out here. It\u2019s amazing to do it in that jersey, what it represents and do it for the team that we have in there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ireland hooker Dan Sheehan was among the first to offer his thoughts at full-time, speaking to ITV as his teammates celebrated with the travelling support.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re such a hungry group. We believe in ourselves a lot,\u201d Sheehan said.<\/p>\n

\"caelan-doris-and-dan-sheehan-celebrate-after-the-match\"
\n Dan Sheehan with Ireland captain Caelan Doris. \u00a9INPHO<\/p>\n

\u00a9INPHO\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew we had a lot of Irish support here. We tapped into it well and I think we came out of the blocks extremely well.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat performance right there is right up there with one of the best we\u2019ve had.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a lot of belief in this group,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody that we need is in the group and when we all come together we can make these special things happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo get a win in Twickenham and see this Irish crowd, it\u2019s pretty special.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ciar\u00e1n Kennedy Reports from Twickenham STUART McCLOSKEY, FOR so long the man who couldn\u2019t force his way into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[65851,145932,61,60,3654,136638,112,83298],"class_list":{"0":"post-311373","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-dan-sheehan","9":"tag-feeling-good","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-rugby","13":"tag-six-nations-2026","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-stuart-mccloskey"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311373","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=311373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}