Jack Crowley said there was “calmness” with Ireland despite playing a portion of Saturday’s 24-13 defeat by South Africa with 12 players.
Five Ireland players were shown yellow cards as the Springboks won in Dublin for the first time since 2012.
After James Ryan’s yellow card was upgraded to a 20-minute red card, Sam Prendergast, Crowley, Andrew Porter and Paddy McCarthy were all sent to the sin-bin for infringements.
Despite playing for 12 players for 10 minutes in the second half, Ireland pushed to the end but came up short of an unlikely comeback against South Africa.
“You are presented with the situation at hand, and the coaches and key leaders in the group put a plan in place and aren’t phased by it,” Crowley said.
“There was no panic – it was like, ‘this is the situation and this is how we’re going to handle it’.”
Crowley said he was proud of the “fight” shown by Ireland, who won the second half 6-5 despite South Africa having a man advantage for the majority of the game, and he had “unbelievable pride”.
“We wanted to win and we knew we could,” he said.
“To be part of a group that fights that way for each other, I’m grateful to be part of that.”
Crowley did say the actual game was “chaotic”, and that he was frustrated with his own yellow card which came after he infringed with scrum-half Cobus Reinach while on the ground at a ruck.
“Coming in your are trying to bring that energy and I probably went over that edge, I was a bit desperate,” the Munster fly-half said.
“It’s in my control to avoid that, so it’s frustrating.”
Despite Ireland’s fight, it was the world champions who left Dublin with an impressive victory and Crowley said they were a world-class side.
“We got what we expected from them,” he said.
“If you do lack discipline, like we did at times, they are going to punish you.”
