Cardiff flanker Alex Mann typified the Welsh defensive display against Ireland as Tandy’s side made more than 240 tackles.<\/p>\n
It was not just the number, it was the impact of the rearguard resistance, demonstrated by a thunderous tackle by Eddie James on Garry Ringrose.<\/p>\n
Tackle statistics often differ as the tally is frequently revised after a match. If Mann made 32 or 33 tackles depending on which facts and figures you follow, that would be a Six Nations record surpassing France hooker Guilhem Guirado and Wales lock Luke Charteris, who both managed 31 in one game.<\/p>\n
Mann’s fellow Cardiff flanker James Botham, lock Dafydd Jenkins and captain Lake were not far behind in the tackle charts.<\/p>\n
Tandy has only picked Mann and Lake to start in all eight matches in his era and praised his dogged back rower.<\/p>\n
“Manny [Alex Mann] has been outstanding,” said Tandy.<\/p>\n
“He doesn’t get the plaudits he deserves, there’s always probably question marks over him whereas we see the player both sides of the ball.<\/p>\n
“He’s not the biggest man in the world, but he’s growing as a leader as well and only going to get better.”<\/p>\n
Former Wales centre Jamie Roberts hailed the defensive effort.<\/p>\n
“I thought they were magnificent,” Roberts told ITV.<\/p>\n
“We know how physical Ireland are, but Wales stopped that green wave dead in its tracks on many occasions and they can take huge pride from that.<\/p>\n
“We’ve talked about Wales being a bit soft, maybe, in the past year, teams finding it easy to score easy tries against them. <\/p>\n
“This was very different, that level of defensive intensity was brilliant.”<\/p>\n
Tandy also pointed to the improved discipline with Wales only conceding seven penalties, despite being under pressure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cardiff flanker Alex Mann typified the Welsh defensive display against Ireland as Tandy’s side made more than 240…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-462726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}