No more Mr Nice Guys, says Devin Toner

Devin Toner wants Ireland to stop being the nice guys of the Six Nations.

The Ireland second row admitted opposition teams have got away with some borderline plays against Joe Schmidt’s men in this year’s championship, while the boys in green have been trying their best to keep their powder dry.

Discipline is a key facet of Schmidt’s coaching philosophy and has stood to Ireland’s advantage in previous seasons, but Toner believes it may be time to test the officials today — with Angus Gardner, the Australian referee, making his Six Nations bow.

“You could say that, yeah,” Toner said.

“I think Joe’s always said that we’re a very disciplined team but I think if it doesn’t start working for you, you do have to try some different stuff to be honest.”

It’s not just Ireland’s ruthlessness that’s been lacking though, they’re also slipping up in more fundamental areas, with the lineout faltering in Twickenham to a worrying degree.

Ireland lost four of 11 set pieces, with two coming in crucial attacking areas of the pitch, is it something then that will weigh on Toner’s mind ahead of today’s clash?

“Well I think with hookers as well as second rows and callers, if you lose a lineout it always eats at you,” Toner admitted. “But I think over the years you learn that if a couple don’t go your way then it’s not the end of the world.

“We know we’re a good lineout and we’ve got good processes.

“But we have to see what went wrong. We had a good plan going into it but all credit to (George) Kruis, he second guessed me.

“A lot of the time it’s a bit of guesswork, like sometimes he stayed and sometimes he went in front of me.

“So he did very well to defend it but obviously I’ve been looking back over what went wrong and looking at how Italy defend and build another plan.

“For every different game you have different plans and different formulas so I’ve just been studying for the last few days.”

The loss of Paul O’Connell and Iain Henderson may give an easy out to Toner, but the second row insists things haven’t changed all that much in the past two years, regardless of personnel.

“It evolves every year but I say that it has similarities as well,” he said.

“It evolves every game as well. For every team we might have a different plan of where we want to win it and how we want to do.

“But calling system-wise it’s very similar to where we started with Paulie a couple of years ago, it hasn’t changed too much but it has kinda evolved over the years.”

Toner had a busy day at the office in Twickenham against a mammoth backrow, and he isn’t expecting a quieter day today at Lansdowne Road, especially with Sergio Parisse in the opposition ranks.

But the legendary Italian is a double edged sword for Jacques Brunel’s men — on his day he can win them a game, but shut him down and you shut down Italy.

“He has been a talisman for Italy for the last 10 years, he’s not going to get over 100 caps for no reason,” Toner said.

“It makes me a bit edgy when I see him there, you know he’s going to try to disrupt things as much as he can and on top of everything he’s a very good lineout forward.

“He’s one of the best things about their team, to be honest.

“When he plays well Italy plays well — and when he doesn’t play well, they don’t play well.

“So I think he’s one of the most important players on their team.

“But he’s a special player, he might come with something out of the woodwork, try a chip and chase like he did against us at the World Cup, but it didn’t come off.

“Sometimes if will come off. He is a special player, no doubt about it.”