After the events in Dublin on Saturday night, a lot of people must have wondered what it was like to be Danny Care at the hands of the England boss Martin Johnson.
It wasn’t pleasant for me, or for anyone in the side. But it was my mum who really gave me a telling off after my sin-binning in the defeat by Ireland.
I had a cup of tea in the hotel with my parents a few hours before the game. The last thing my mum said to me was: “Make sure you don't get yourself sent off.”
So as you can imagine, she wasn’t happy. She normally has a bit of a go at me about something after every game, but she did have a point on Saturday.
I don’t read the newspapers, and I’m told that is a good thing at the moment. All I can say is I've never been more gutted than I was at Croke Park.
There's no hiding the fact that we lost another game because of our own indiscipline. We threw the game away rather than Ireland winning it, and I was a major part in that. No excuses.
A lot of people are saying what I did was pointless, but there was a reason for it. I saw Marcus Horan stood in that ruck, and I saw their scrum-half Peter Stringer looking for the ball.
I thought: "I'll try and hit Horan on top of Stringer then it might slow the ball down a bit. And if we can get a turnover from it, then great."
I thought the ball was still in the ruck. It was a silly thing to do, I admit, but there was some thought behind it.
And like Johnno said, you are allowed to hit the back of rucks. But I realise now it was unnecessary to do it at that point in the game.
I don’t think I can really defend what I did, but also I believe because of the disciplinary situation with England at the moment it was magnified.
I could only hold my hands up afterwards. I apologised to the boys and said I wouldn’t let it happen again.
I had tried to pick the pace of the game up a bit when I came on. I felt I was doing that, I was enjoying the game and getting into it and then I got sin-binned and I was absolutely gutted.
But you have to learn from your experiences and I can assure you I will never forget that feeling I had on Saturday. I let my team-mates down, and you never want to feel that way as a player. But hopefully now we can all move on.
Cheers,
DC
Watch highlights of Ireland v England here
Read Danny Care's previous blogs
