By Grainne McGuinness and Shaun Cronin

Mike Ross believes Ireland’s clean sweep of victories in the Autumn Test series, despite a serious injury list, highlights the depth of the squad and the range of possibilities available to Joe Schmidt.

Speaking in the aftermath of yesterday’s nail-biting win against Australia in the Aviva stadium, Ross was upbeat about Ireland’s performance during the three games in November.

“It’s been good,” he said. “We’ve got two good victories under our belt, over two southern hemisphere powers and you need to have that belief going forward into the Six Nations, and certainly into the World Cup.

“There’s a good bit of strength in depth and it just shows what guys can do when they get an opportunity.”

Ireland head coach Schmidt went into the series unable to call on a long list of players, including Keith Earls, Cian Healy, Dave Kearney, Luke Marshall, Fergus McFadden, Sean O’Brien, Donnacha Ryan and Andrew Trimble. Ross said injuries to the squad were always worrying, but there was an upside to them.

“It’s been a mixed blessing because it’s shown there are another tier of guys who can step up and do a job when required,” he said.

“It certainly looks like there’s a lot of healthy competition in the squad.”

The 34-year-old said the last 10-15 minutes of the game were tough.

“It was pretty intense because they had thrown on two game changers in (Quade) Cooper and (Kurtley) Beale, and we knew we couldn’t take our eyes off them for a second,” he admitted.

“They’d be through a hole and under the sticks.”

It was suggested that it was a game Ireland could easily have lost 12 months ago and the prop agreed that might be the case.

“Possibly,” Ross said. “We certainly made tough work for ourselves, we got off to a great start and then they came back into it.

Bernard Foley scored a try to bring Australia back into the game last night.

“After that the game just tightened up massively, it was a case of who could be the most disciplined.”

He said Schmidt was able to make the half-time teamtalk at half-time despite suffering from appendicitis and settled and refocused the players.

“He said to us ‘tidy up the rucks. Be aware of your offloads and make sure you get your hustles and jams going.’ It’s one thing to just chop them at the ankles, but if they’re getting offloads it creates another dimension that you have to be aware of.”

Ross was relaxed about the prospect of extra expectation on the squad going into a World Cup year.

“That’s Irish sport for you, you’re either a hero or a villain,” he joked.

“There’s expectation on us, but no more than we are putting on ourselves. We know the level of performance that’s required now and we have to deliver on that every single time otherwise there’s some guy waiting to take your spot.”

He continued: “Most of the pressure is probably from external sources and we kind of dismiss that. It’s not much use for us to worry about that, it doesn’t help. We know if we get our own game plan right and execute well we give ourselves every chance of winning.”

Ross felt Ireland were well-positioned going into 2015.

“I think we’ve proven to ourselves that we can deliver at the top level when it matters. We need to just keep continuing to do that,” he said.

“There’s a big Six Nations coming up. There’ll be plenty of other nations looking to take the Six Nations title and we’ll be looking to defend it.

“And then later on it’s the biggest tournament in rugby, the World Cup. There’s plenty of spots up for grabs and everyone is going to have to perform.”