Ireland coach Declan Kidney was determined to take the positives from Ireland's narrow 23-21 defeat to South Africa at the Aviva Stadium last night.

The coach refused to criticise his players, despite a large number of individual errors by his team.

"I will never blame my players for trying things. Perhaps the weather conditions weren't always the best for trying things but you can't fault errors caused by players trying things.

"Perhaps sometimes they were too eager to impress for the first game at their new home. We conceded soft tries at bad times but we look forward to an improvement next week."

When pressed on the improvement in performance after the introduction of Ronan O'Gara after the hour mark Kidney said: "We will have to look at what went right in the final quarter and look at the first three quarters for improvement."

Kidney also argued that the decision to introduce O'Gara and Peter Stringer were not too late to change the game.

"There is no science to timing these things but we felt that it was unfortunate that they scored their second try just as we were making our changes."

Kidney went on to speak about the Irish fans, some of whom left the rebuilt Lansdowne Road when Ireland went 23-9 down.

"We are disappointed. Disappointed for the people who forked out to be here and in seven days time we have a chance to turn it around and we look forward to doing that for the Irish rugby supporters."