Warriors ace Dan Parks relives 'pleasing' moment he blew away Irish triple crown bid

Mar 25 2010 By Matthew Leslie

Dan parks

BOO BOYS don't affect me says Dan Parks after his dramatic kick gave Scotland a memorable 23-20 win over Ireland in Dublin last week.

The Irish, keen to wrap up the Triple Crown in their last fixture at the famous Croke Park stadium, were hoping to bow out in style but didn't reckon on the Glasgow man spoiling their party.

Parks put in a superb display booting over 18 points and continously pinged the Irish back in their own half.

But crucially, the Warriors ace kept his cool, despite 80,000 Irishmen howling at him to miss, to at last give Scotland a victory.

He said: "It was a very pleasing moment.

"I missed one at a similar angle at the other end of the pitch when attempting to convert John's (Beattie) try but for some reason the wind was blowing in a different direction at this end of the pitch.

"Some have commented it was like a Brazilian football player's free-kick the way it bent in but I didn't put any extra swerve whatsoever - I used the breeze and it literally blew in.

"As for the booing, not a great thing but it doesn't affect me.

"Once you step up to kick, everything else is blanked out and you are just focused on one thing."

Meanwhile, Dan's Glasgow team-mate Kelly Brown said the Scots knew they had it in them to rack up a win - it was just a question of when they were going to do it.

The Scottish set-piece has been credited for a number of good performances in this tournament but last weekend, it really came alight against an Irish pack - led by the formidable Phil O'Connell - they were expected to struggle against.

He said: "Nothing really changed from the preparation for the first four games.

"We felt that on the whole we had played well but just needed to find the missing ingredient to get over the finishing line.

"That said we felt we were close to finding it and we went into the Ireland game confident of winning. "Our set piece was good and once you have your scrums and line-outs working well you give yourself a great chance of securing a victory.

"We knew Ireland had a good lineout prior to the game but we didn't do anything special to combat it because our own line-out had been working extremely well throughout the tournament.

"Al Kellock made a lot of good calls and Ross Ford was able to hit the target with each throw. Having secured our own ball we felt confident enough to disrupt theirs which we did as we pinched a few."