James Lowe's celebration v All Blacks defended by Ireland team-mate Cian Healy

Cian Healy has defended Ireland team-mate James Lowe for celebrating his monster 50:22 kick in last Friday's defeat to New Zealand.

Lowe turned to the crowd and roared after producing the kick that put his side back into the All Blacks' 22. But the winger - and some of his colleagues - were criticised for the outburst because Ireland were 10 points down at the time with eight minutes left.

The hosts failed to register another score and lost for the first time in 20 games at the Aviva Stadium.

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"I think if you do something well it’s fairly acceptable to celebrate," said Healy. "Lowey’s kick was ridiculous, I’d be clapping my hands if I did that.

"Probably not so on board celebrating an opposition knock on or something like that but it’s each to their own, whatever gets somebody into a game mentally. And if that’s what they want to do to drag the supporters into the game to amp up the stadium, to get a bit of a mood going, grand."

Veteran loosehead Healy came on for the last seven minutes but, like most of the bench, couldn't make the impact that was needed to get the hosts back into the contest.

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"Pretty disappointed as a whole, we didn’t get to stamp much of our authority on the game at all," he said. "There were some good defensive sets and good opportunities, but the discipline was the biggest thing that let us down.

"Nine penalties from the forward pack alone, so there are a lot of areas to clean up. You have to look at it in a positive light. that we clean them up and put our stamp on the game and we should get some real rewards.

"Everyone is a bit different. I would just watch it in a fairly relaxed manner again and try not get too worked up watching a game and then the next day leaning into the why and how things happened. Then you rely on the game leaders with what comes after that.

"Everyone has the meeting and your opinion on what might have happened and how we rebuild and then the game plan will come in for how we rebuild and how we are going to go about that.

"That will be led by out-halves, maybe centres, captain, second rows, how we are going to map our lineouts, our mauls, everything against a team."

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