Unchanged Ireland still wary of Scots

EDDIE O’SULLIVAN yesterday went close to admitting that he has never had an easier task in selecting an Irish side.

To nobody’s surprise, he has chosen an unchanged starting XV for the Triple Crown visit to Murrayfield on Saturday, insisting there wasn’t “a compelling reason” for changing the team that so spectacularly humiliated England at Croke Park.

If there was an issue, it would have been at hooker where Rory Best holds off the challenge of Jerry Flannery, based largely on the fact that the Ulsterman has done nothing wrong, a whole lot right and the team by and large has kept winning. A further indication of the strength of depth available to the coach is that Geordan Murphy has once again failed to find a place in the 22.

Eoin Reddan, who won a cap as a replacement on the wing in Paris last year, has been drafted in as a replacement for Isaac Boss, almost certainly ruled out for the remainder of the Six Nations by the A/C shoulder joint he damaged playing for Ulster last week.

Number one scrum-half Peter Stringer and skipper Brian O’Driscoll have recovered from injuries that cost them their places against France and made them doubtful starters to the English game.

O’Driscoll captains Ireland for the 36th time and so equals Keith Wood’s record. He claimed that he hadn’t “thought about it very much although of course it is another honour.”

Stringer makes his 75th appearance in the green jersey and in the continued absence of the injured Malcolm O’Kelly, remains his country’s most capped player, three ahead of O’Driscoll and Girvan Dempsey and four clear of John Hayes.

Given the contrasting nature of the respective performances of Ireland and Scotland in their most immediate outings, there shouldn’t be a scintilla of doubt about the visitors’ capacity to depart Murrayfield on Saturday with a third Triple Crown in four years.

But the party line clearly is to underline how Edinburgh has been a “graveyard” for Irish hopes in the past coupled with the certainty that Frank Hadden’s side will come out with a huge amount to prove on behalf of Scottish rugby after the defeat to Italy.

“Of course we’re the favourites,” acknowledged O’Driscoll. “But Scotland have been a difficult side for Ireland over the years, especially at Murrayfield, and they have an awful lot to play for on Saturday. So do we and it is very often the side with the greater will to win that comes out on top.”

However, if Ireland needed something to stimulate them as they prepare for Murrayfield, then yesterday words of the opposing forward coach George Graham that “this is Scotland’s best pack in years” should have the desired effect.

O’Sullivan interpreted his comments to mean that: “they intend to beat us up front and to give us a battering.” Given that Wales and England targeted the Irish scrum and France took on the eight as an entity and none achieved the expected result, this won’t cause the coach or his players to lose too much sleep between now and Saturday.

And then, as if forgetting the party line, O’Sullivan warned: “Scotland are always difficult in Edinburgh and you are in peril if you don’t play well there. They will want to fix what went wrong against Italy and have thrown down a marker if you listen to what Graham has been saying. They are seeking forward domination and that’s fair enough. It’s the way rugby is, dominate up front and it’s a lot easier. And I’d also have to agree that defensively the Scottish line-out is one of the best in the world. They have averaged something like 30% of opposition ball over the last six or seven matches which is a pretty good statistic. We expect it will be very intensive up front, they’ll be doing us no favours and that’s no more than we would expect.”

It is inconceivable that Ireland won’t maintain their momentum in Edinburgh, otherwise the sense of anti-climax among the squad and the general public would be so enormous as to dilute much of what was gained against England. So O’Sullivan is demanding a performance of similar quality while stressing that the important thing is to win the match. Some might decry the value these days of the Triple Crown but certainly not the Irish coach.

“There’s always the danger that familiarity breeds contempt,” he sighed resignedly. “But I still think the Triple Crown is worth winning. If you can win your three games against the home nations every year would be great. If you win too many Triple Crowns, people will write them off but for a long time we’d have bought the lid off it if we could. At the same time, now we have two and possibly a third and people might be getting blasé about it. But it’s the next goal we can achieve as a team. It only happens if we get the job done on Saturday. And, of course, we stay in the championship because we don’t know what’s going to happen in Twickenham.”