Mike Ross: England had motivation, and and you can’t underestimate that

As Ireland women’s scrum coach, Mike Ross bemoaned England’s “professionalism” after his side’s loss in Donnybrook last Friday night.

As a fan of Joe Schmidt’s team, he grimaced his way through another defeat to the same opposition a day later — but found something else to blame.

While England’s women are streets ahead of Ireland in terms of the support and resources on offer, England’s men had something more primal to thank.

Ross, and most of the fans in Aviva Stadium last Saturday, will have been pained by what they saw — but the former Ireland prop says England’s players endured something even worse last year.

“England have had a good 12 months to think about what happened in Twickenham,” said Ross.

“They had to watch last March a Twickenham filled with thousands of Irish celebrating a Grand Slam, whooping and hollering... at their home.

“They had to sit through that — and you can’t underestimate the motivation factor in that.

“Eddie Jones is very good in preparing teams for one-off games too, think back to Japan v South Africa [in the 2016 World Cup], it was probably the perfect storm...”

England raced into an early lead with Jonny May touching down inside two minutes, and Elliott Daly’s try on the half hour put the visitors back into a lead that they would only stretch as time went on.

Henry Slade scored two late on to make the scoreline even more flattering, but while the backs were the ones with their names on the scoreboard, Ross says it was those up front who did the real damage.

“We gifted them a couple of tries, let’s be honest, they didn’t have to work hard for the try after two minutes, then there was an unfortunate bounce for Jacob Stockdale in the second try,” he said.

“But on top of that, you’d have to say we lost the game up front.

“England’s line speed was very good, they were right on the edge, borderline illegal sometimes. If you have that coming at you, it’s hard to gain momentum.

“They had Manu [Tuilagi], Billy [Vunipola] and Mako [Vunipola] back — Mako played extremely well, Tom Curry had a great game as well, they discovered a very good back row, they’ll hurt a lot of teams.”

Over the past year, it was the Ireland pack that hurt other sides — including England, Australia and New Zealand.

So, what happens when Ireland’s Plan A does not work?

“Joe won’t be too happy with it, Monday would not have been nice in Carton House — the lads will be feeling a bit sore — but he’s not going to lose the plot,” Ross insists.

“One bad game does not make a bad team. He’s always conscious you’re not as good as you’re made out to be and you’re not as bad as you’re made out to be. He’s not really the emotional, knee-jerk coach, he will take little lessons but won’t completely change things after a one-off.

“There’s always a few strategies up Joe’s sleeve, but if something’s working incredibly well — why change it? If it starts to become a pattern, there’ll be changes made. If they’re looking vulnerable to one particular style of play, he’ll absolutely make changes, he’ll be looking at it closely.”

Ross does not expect many changes against Scotland this weekend, the former Leinster prop backing Johnny Sexton to prove his class after a tough day at the office. He also expects Rob Kearney to return.

Ireland will still be missing Devin Toner, Garry Ringrose, and CJ Stander, but Ross expects the players selected to have plenty to prove.

“I think they’ll have a strong performance which they’ll need, because Scotland are playing well themselves — they were 33-3 up against Italy before sitting back last weekend,” he said.

“They’re our first opposition in the World Cup and a lot of the media are dismissing them, thinking Ireland will storm their group. I’m not so sure. This weekend will tell us a lot.”