Scots will look to soften up weary Irish

A home game against a winless side trying to avoid a wooden spoon really should not have this much importance placed on it for Ireland.

Yet today’s RBS 6 Nations clash with Scotland at the Aviva Stadium is just as much a crossroads game for the home side as it is for the visitors.

It has been a messy championship for head coach Declan Kidney and his players, one full of unforeseen disruptions and more predictable casualty rates; of fitful performances, irritating errors and tantalising glimpses of this group’s potential that make the return of a loss, a win and a draw from the opening three games all the more frustrating.

So this penultimate game of the Six Nations campaign arrives with Ireland needing to show they are still a team capable of putting together a world-beating 80 minutes and not just cameos of class.

Are they the group of players that last year sealed successes over both the Six Nations and Tri-Nations champions or the squad that this year turned victory into defeat against Wales and a stalemate with the French, either side of a second-half romp against Italy?

On the face of it, Scotland will not provide much of a litmus test given their current predicament.

They are in their worst run of form since a Six Nations whitewash in 2004 and have to prove they are not just makeweights alongside the Italians by delivering head coach Andy Robinson just a third win in 14 Six Nations matches to avoid their final match against Italy next Saturday from becoming a wooden-spoon decider. Much like 2010, when the Scots averted a whitewash by winning their last game, a 23-20 win over Ireland at Croke Park.

This time around Scotland are still finding victory hard to come by and are in Dublin trying to end a run of five consecutive defeats, the first of which was a World Cup loss to Argentina. That was a heartbreaker, Dan Parks’ missed drop goal at the death condemning Robinson’s side to a 13-12 defeat, while the final group game was a 16-12 loss to England.

There has been more of the same since, against England again and France two weeks ago in their last outing, the only sizeable defeat coming against Wales when the Scots had two men sin-binned.

Those narrow margins of victory give the impression that Scotland are on the cusp of a breakthrough, that, just as Ireland are edging closer to a complete performance to match that last-day trouncing of England a year ago, Robinson’s men are set to convert all that angst and put in a solid 80 minutes.

Whether that will be enough to defeat Ireland, particularly if Kidney’s men also step up to the plate, may hinge upon how much last Sunday’s intensely physical battle will take out of the Irish effort today.

It has already cost them the services of Paul O’Connell, Sean O’Brien and Conor Murray, while Donncha O’Callaghan and Keith Earls missed Wednesday’s training session, which was the only major hit-out of the week. So too did Jonny Sexton, although the fly-half picked up his bang on the foot on Tuesday and all three are declared fit.

Equally as worrying is the huge toll that game will have taken on the players not mentioned in the medical bulletins this week. Tighthead prop Mike Ross described the after effects of last weekend’s encounter as a physical hangover and that will have been more acutely felt given Ireland have had just six days to return from Paris, recuperate and then get back up for the Scots.

All in the camp insist this is not a problem and that come matchday, all will be well but with Ross expecting an equal challenge from the Scots to the one the French posed at scrum-time, there is likely to be little respite for the depleted Irish forwards.

Ross was banking on Robinson selecting Euan Murray after the Scot’s usual, self-imposed Sunday exile last time out, describing the Newcastle Falcons front-rower as “probably their strongest scrummaging tighthead”. Even with Geoff Cross going up against Cian Healy, an all-Edinburgh front-row, backed by two big locks and a hefty back-row is not going to give the Irish forwards the rugby equivalent of a paracetamol to soothe their aches.

Having enjoyed a two-week break since their last outing, Scotland will have the mindset that the Irish have been softened up by the French and are vulnerable. They will try and take Ireland on up front and if they can introduce some ugly rugby to the pretty stuff they have been implementing with little success to date then Scotland may have hit upon a winning formula.

All of which makes today’s game every bit as challenging as last Sunday’s. Ireland nearly prevailed there and should go that extra step today, particularly if they have learned the lessons of the games that got away from them these last few weeks.

Last weekend’s 17-17 draw in Paris has stung the Irish, who believe it represented a drop in the high standards they set for themselves.

If that’s the case, such motivation will make up for tired limbs and the Scots could be in for the backlash.