Irish coach: Earls now has tools to tackle Tuilagi

Ireland coach Mark Tainton is confident Keith Earls will cope much better with the threat of England outside centre Manu Tuilagi than he did when he came up against him in the World Cup warm-up match last August.

That day the explosive Tuilagi scored England’s first try and punched hole after hole in an Irish defensive line, where Earls was consistently one of the weakest links.

“We all saw what happened in that match pre-World Cup, and Keith has worked very hard on his defence lines with people coming in from different angles since then,” said Tainton.