By Gareth Thomas Wales captain

The 28-18 win over Scotland must have been an entertaining game to watch because we were flat out for 80 minutes and the boys were really blowing at the end.

Thomas was back in try-scoring form against the Scots

Getting the two tries was fantastic, it had been a while since my last Wales score.

But as I always say, individual glory doesn't matter - it's all about the team - and all four of our tries were team efforts.

As a nation we needed that win. Everyone was grumpy last Monday after the England loss, now it will be good to see some smiles on peoples' faces.

It's important that the fans believe in us and follow us, they're as much a part of this team as any player.

Our forwards have taken a lot of unfair stick since the loss at Twickenham and they were geed up for this game.

They got stuck in to the Scotland pack and got on top, they deserve a lot of credit.

I didn't see the sending off incident but Scott Murray apologised straight afterwards.

Sometimes the red mist does descend in rugby, that comes to us all.

But he's a great bloke and he'd clearly regretted what he did - it takes a man to apologise and that was his first reaction.

It takes a man to apologise and that was Scott Murray's first reaction

In a way it was disappointing, you want to have 15 against 15 in rugby, but we won't let it take the shine off our win.

Fair play to Scotland, they're like us in the way they play, they're passionate about rugby.

Scotland upped their game - that's something you often find when a side is down to 14 men, they dig deep and find that extra energy.

What does take the gloss off a little for us is allowing Scotland back in for those two tries at the end; we pride ourselves on our defence.

Thomas has sympathy for Scott Murray

We'll look at that ahead of the trip to Dublin. I've seen bits of the France-Ireland game and there looked a great pace to it, like our match with Scotland.

It takes a great team to fight back like the Irish did in Paris.

There'll be real pressure on us facing Ireland at Lansdowne Road, we know exactly what they're capable of.

They've got an awesome back line. Mike Ruddock coached most of them in his time at Leinster so he'll have plenty of information to give us.

But the week's break will do the squad good, the guys will come back a lot fresher and, as everyone knows, there will be players coming back from suspension to give Mike a selection headache.

This is just a great tournament, we saw on the weekend that everyone is capable of beating everyone else.

If a side can manage to sneak an away win they're in pole position - it's like the group stages of the Heineken Cup in that respect - and we know we're in the championship mix right up to the end.