Ireland not interested in playing 'PlayStation rugby'

James Ryan will return to Stade de France this weekend having made a memorable Six Nations debut there in 2018

Ireland's James Ryan collects the ball in the lineout during the Six Nations match against Wales. Picture: Niall Carson

Ireland cannot get sucked into the sense of occasion building up around this Saturday’s clash with France, James Ryan has warned, despite seeing this Six Nations showdown as an “unbelievable opportunity” for Andy Farrell's side.

Ryan will return to Stade de France this weekend having made a memorable Six Nations debut there in 2018, when the seeds for that year’s Grand Slam were sown thanks to Johnny Sexton’s game-clinching, long-range drop goal. This Saturday’s renewal sees Ireland in the form to make another run to the title, on the back of a nine-game winning streak reached with last weekend’s opening-round bonus-point victory at home to Wales.

Yet the 24-year-old lock, who also played in the October 2020 defeat in Paris, believes Ireland cannot afford to be complacent about their current momentum and believes head coach Andy Farrell is keeping the Ireland squad suitably grounded.

“We know it’s an unbelievable opportunity,” Ryan said of the France clash. “Weeks like this don’t come around often so we’re trying not to think too much about the occasion and just focus on our own performance.

“(Andy Farrell) would be big on our performance and measuring our performance this weekend rather than the outcome. That's what he's big on and that's what we'll focus on again this week."

Ireland are a much-improved team since that most recent visit to Paris, when an error-strewn performance portrayed a side struggling to find its identity as they attempted to implement a new playing style under Farrell. Yet Ryan had insisted throughout the teething problems of that 15-month period that followed the 2019 World Cup quarter-final exit under Joe Schmidt, that the national side’s fortunes would turn and that has borne fruit with some stellar performances since, with Ireland now unbeaten in 12 months.

"It instils a bit of belief that the path you’re following is going in the right direction,” the Leinster second-row said. "I think confidence is important as well, really important.

"Probably at the same time, I know what we spoke about last week, in 2018 we beat New Zealand at home in the Aviva and it was a massive win, the first time on Irish soil...then we rocked up and got steamrolled in the first game of the (2019) Six Nations.

"So I think we're pretty grounded and we know that it's a new campaign now and it's not starting again but there can't be any complacency, we've got to keep pushing forward.

"Even though we were happy with last week, this week is another challenge again and a good opportunity for us to keep pushing our boundaries.”

Those boundaries, as Farrell sees them, have no room for what Ryan says the head coach calls “PlayStation rugby” though if the forward had his way, a reboot for the Rugby 08 video game he played as a kid may change the boss’s mind.

“Rugby 08... It was an unbelievable game, I don't know why they haven't made a decent one since that. EA Sports need to do it again," he said, while of Ireland’s current style of attack and heads up rugby, he added: "That would be one of the things Faz would say, we don't want to play PlayStation rugby.

"We want to play what's in front of us, not just playing the play for the sake of it, just playing early to where the space is or playing what's on.

"So, I think that's one thing that's come on. We're playing to space early, our attack is very connected and we're playing heads up rugby.

"We play early, play to space. It's definitely an area we've looked at."