Peter O'Mahony is a leader you follow into battle every day

ON an evening that began with tears, Ireland captain Peter O'Mahony ended the night in exhilaration by lifting the Six Nations trophy. 

Ireland emerged on the right side of an arm wrestle of an encounter with Scotland at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday.

The Cork man's emotional reaction to the national anthems perhaps hinted that this may have been the last time that we see the legendary blindside flanker on national duty, but in the aftermath of the triumph he was cagey to reveal his intentions.

"I don't know. If it was my last one, it was a pretty good one," he said. "Thankfully we went out and did it against a good team. We showed grit, ambition with the ball, and I thought we played some good rugby.

"We spoke about getting stuck in, and put a lot of work in their legs. I thought the 10 minutes after half time was really impressive.

"It's a huge honour every time you get selected to play for your country."

His fellow Munster teammate and Cork man Jack Crowley may be unaware of his captain's future intentions, but he was still quick to sing his praises: "He's unbelievable, isn't he? He is a leader and we follow him everywhere.

We follow him into battle and he is someone we all have such high respect for. You will play for him every day."

"It's everything to win a trophy for the country. Representing this nation is something that we speak about a lot as a group. To win a trophy and be able to give something for all the support they have given us over the past couple of years - I'm delighted we could do that for them.

Man of the Match Jamison Gibson-Park was also delighted to have secured the title in front of the home fans.

"It's a pretty amazing feeling. To be back here in front of our friends, our family and our home supporters is pretty incredible, especially two years in a row."

“It was a good game, with two good teams going at it. They had a Triple Crown on the line and we were going for a Championship, so it was tough going and two good teams were going at it.

"I suppose our backs were against the wall a little bit. I'm so unbelievably proud of the boys and the whole staff have stuck together over the last week and managed to gouge out a performance today that we can be proud of."

Ireland loosehead prop Andrew Porter scored the second-half try that gave Ireland the crucial breathing space to survive Huw Jones’ late score, and he was relieved to escape to victory.

“Scotland are a team that always stick in there. You could see that in the last few minutes there, we were on the edge of our seats, credit to them.

"They were a tough team to break down, their defence put it up to us. You just got to keep backing yourself and that's what we did. Pleased with the back-to-back championships".

His Leinster teammate Robbie Henshaw was equally euphoric: "It's unbelievable. We felt a bit of pressure after last week and we know we were going to be up against it with Scotland having the Triple Crown on the line. It's an unbelievable feeling and the crowd turned up for us. We're delighted with that”.