Rory Best warns Scotland must not be taken for granted

Ireland captain Rory Best has warned his side they will have to play better than they did to beat the All Blacks if they want to get their 2017 RBS 6 Nations campaign off to a winning start in Scotland next week.

The Irish begin their bid to unseat reigning champions England with a difficult trip to Murrayfield in nine days but though confidence is high after last year’s victories over South Africa, Australia and an historic first win over New Zealand in Chicago, the national skipper is adamant that nothing can be taken for granted against Vern Cotter’s Scots.

“Yes, there’s a bit of confidence about,” Best said yesterday at the RBS 6 Nations media launch in London.

“At the same time we’re under no illusions that everything that happened in 2016 has gone and while we can use that to improve and go forward, if we think that because we beat New Zealand in Chicago that gives us a right to win at Murrayfield... I think we’ve gone well beyond that as an Irish squad.

“We understand that we need to use results like that to push us forward to be better again at Murrayfield, because I think this Six Nations Championship, the way it is at the minute with the way Scotland are going, and the way Glasgow and Edinburgh are going in Europe, it’s going to take a performance equal or better to anything we produced in November.”

Best said the five-try performance to topple the world champions at Soldier Field was quickly forgotten.

“The likes of the New Zealand and Australia wins, they give us confidence but ultimately when you talk to anyone...look, it was an historic win against New Zealand to get that first one, but probably a lot of the players that day haven’t given it a second thought bar the day or two afterwards.

“It will be something we look back on when we retire or at the end of the season, or whenever it will be, and you look back fondly. But because we’ve so many quality players but competitive players, they were saying: ‘Right, what’s the next thing we can do?’

“We trained on the Tuesday after that, having flown home from Chicago, so it was straight back into: ‘Right, how can we improve, how can we keep us pushing forward?’ and that’s the environment that we’re trying to nurture and trying to keep there.”