Ireland’s quality to shine through
He could have promoted Ronan O’Gara, Fergus McFadden and Dave Kilcoyne for Jonathan Sexton, Gordon D’Arcy and Cian Healy, with Keith Earls filling in for Simon Zebo. But instead he gave Paddy Jackson, Luke Marshall and Tom Court the nod.
The decision to start Court was apparently made because Kilcoyne is seen as a dynamic impact player by the Irish management while Court has been in excellent form since moving exclusively to loose head and will pressurise Scotland’s Geoff Cross for the first 50-55 minutes before the Munster man is introduced.
Luke Marshall is a special talent, has the power and pace needed to be a modern international centre and can become D’Arcy’s long-term successor.
However, I would have selected Ronan O’Gara for this game and not Paddy Jackson.
O’Gara did not impress off the bench against England or in last weekend’s RaboDirect Pro12 for Munster but, as Kidney said himself: “Form is temporary, class is permanent”. Neither the Irish pack nor Munster was dominant in either game and O’Gara, like any other half-back, would have suffered from that. He is one of the most mentally strong players to ever wear the Ireland jersey and being the starting out-half the week of a Six Nations game would have energised him.
At 36, time isn’t on his side but he never relied on power or pace to deliver and his game sense and his distribution and kicking would have been a bonus in Murrayfield.
In fact, if I had to leave out O’Gara I would have went for Ian Madigan ahead of Jackson. Madigan has the speed of thought to play international rugby and would suit Ireland’s current style. Jackson, while undoubtedly talented, might lack that dominating personality all good 10s have at this stage of their career as he gets an armchair ride beside Ruan Pienaar in Ulster.
While he will have lots of help from Conor Murray and Brian O’Driscoll it is impossible to protect anyone in the red hot atmosphere of Test rugby and it will be interesting to see how his place-kicking holds up.
Ireland should still win though.
They will have spent the last two weeks trying to figure out what went wrong against England and how to get the strategy and mindset right this Sunday.
The Scots have unearthed players with pace in the backs with Stuart Hogg, Tim Visser and Sean Maitland being obvious dangers, but apart from the back row the rest of their team does not convince.
Richie Gray is an outstanding athlete but has been very poor for the Sale Sharks this season and I don’t see him as the certain Lions starter so many others do. Their scrum is also weak and Mike Ross, Rory Best and Tom Court can win us three or four penalties.
If we target Sean Lamont’s outside centre channel and replicate the quality of ball we had in the first half against Wales we could reap the same kind of performance.
It’s important we beat them up in the pack. The maul was excellent against a much more powerful English team and that’s a great way to use Conor Murray’s box kicking and sniping runs.
But we can’t rely on that alone. Jamie Heaslip must try and take more ball on himself. If Ross gets the heave going in the scrum expect Heaslip to charge at the Scottish out-half Ruaridh Jackson on at least a couple of occasions.
Ireland know what to expect from Scotland. Under Andy Robinson they had lots of possession and went wide a lot but had no cutting edge. While they now have a bit of pace, against the best defences in the world you need to bust them around the fringes or up the middle first to really hurt them out wide.
That’s why you fancy the Irish back row and defence to be able to out-muscle the Scottish ball carriers at the collisions and negate the Scots’ speed out wide.
The lack of detail in our kicking game that was so evident against England should also be rectified. Rob Kearney’s left foot should be used more often to ensure we play in Scotland’s half, which is even more important in away games.
We have the quality to win, we just need to execute now.
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