Farrell can enjoy morning views in Biarritz

ON THE RIGHT TRACK: Ireland Head Coach Andy Farrell will be happy with his side's win and have a few issues to iron out. Pic: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

Well, we all know whose shoes we'd rather be in today following Ireland’s final home game before next month’s World Cup.

It only takes the briefest of glances at the respective issues facing Ireland’s Andy Farrell and his England counterpart Steve Borthwick after this one-sided run out in Dublin that exposed the visitor’s many flaws. 

And why even a far-from-perfect Irish performance that still produced a five-try-to-one victory underlined just why the Grand Slam winners are tracking very nicely indeed just three weeks out from the opening weekend’s pool fixtures in France.

It is why Farrell and his 38-player Ireland squad will have woken up by in Biarritz this morning looking to kick on towards their final tune-up this Saturday evening against Samoa in Bayonne looking to iron out some wrinkles under tournament-type conditions in the southern French heat while Borthwick, back at England’s Pennyhill Park training base, will try and rally his seemingly directionless troops for a home game with Fiji with not one but two potential suspensions casting a shadow over proceedings.

With Owen Farrell’s prolonged disciplinary issues following his red card against Wales having already disrupted England’s planning for Dublin, World Rugby’s decision to appeal the downgrading of that red card to a yellow will drag the saga into a second week. 

The last thing Borthwick needed, aside from ownership of a side woefully short on attacking ambition, was for Billy Vunipola to get himself sent off at the Aviva.

Like Farrell, the England No.8 was dismissed, initially with a yellow card, for a high contact with the shoulder to the head of the ball carrier he was attempting to tackle. 

It did not take long for Vunipola’s yellow for his dangerous action on Andrew Porter to get upgraded to red, sending the veteran back-rower from the naughty step of the sin bin to the dock of a disciplinary hearing sometime this week.

By the time he trudged down the tunnel, Ireland had exploited the space his dismissal had created with their third try of the evening as left wing James Lowe collected a long pass from Ross Byrne after England’s defences had been stretched to breaking point.

Lowe’s score added to the first-half tries from Bundee Aki and Garry Ringrose that had given a rusty-looking Ireland a 12-3 interval lead that would have been bigger had they been firing on all cylinders. A malfunctioning lineout was the chief culprit, Ireland twice wasting try-scoring opportunities from driving maul range in that scrappy opening 40 minutes which also brought a foot injury to dynamic hooker Dan Sheehan.

It needed a dressing-room intervention from Farrell to shake off some that rust from a playing group in which 12 starters were making their first appearances of the summer.

"I thought that if we really believed that we wanted to push ourselves like we said we were going to do that we could capitalise on that,” the head coach said. "And I didn't think we had that cutting edge in the first half, that grit we needed to be able to do that.

“I thought we should have been better off on the scoreboard. But what goes with that is it was the first game and people trying to find a way even though we've talked about them not finding their way into the first game.

"You've have got to be at your best. I felt we just weren't at the type of edge that we wanted to be. We found it a bit more in the second-half.” 

Farrell got what he asked for, and despite his demand to hit the ground running he will be satisfied that many of his frontline players had successfully returned to the fray.

“It's feeling the blood at the back of your throat,” he added. “It is tough. You are supposed to take yourself to a dark place and thrive on that and at times in the second-half we did.” 

The removal of Vunipola undoubtedly made the process easier, reducing England to 14 men for the final 28 minutes and allowing more success for Ireland’s attack out on the edges having sucked in the scrambling Red Rose defence.

Man of the match Mack Hansen had spent little time on his right wing, popping up in midfield at every opportunity and making a nuisance of himself, even supplying the inch-perfect kick to the space he had left behind out wide that was then occupied by Ringrose in the first half. Yet he was in position to claim Ireland’s fourth of the evening on 64 minutes.

Lowe by then had made way for the hero of the hour Keith Earls to win his 100th cap, greeted onto the pitch by a standing ovation and generating the biggest roar of the game when he launched himself into the corner having received a monster pass, launched by Aki from the middle of the pitch.

The evening was complete in that moment, a near capacity crowd sated by the emotion of Earls’s celebration shared enthusiastically by all 14 of his team-mates and more besides in that left-hand corner. 

"I thought we played some good rugby at times, some 'clunky' stuff again," Farrell added. "Certainly dropping the ball at the line under pressure seems to be a start of the season type of thing, dealing with that type of stuff where you are right at the line and you know you are going to be hit and people snatching at it rather than having soft hands. There was a bit of that going on.

"But some of the tries that we scored I thought were super. We were nice and connected, everyone pushing at the line which obviously makes it hard for the defence to read.” 

Next up will be the physicality and improvisation of the Samoans, the final dry run 14 days out from Ireland’s Pool B opener against Romania in Bordeaux. There will be tougher challenges beyond those fixtures and there are undoubtedly issues that need fixing, while Farrell also has a week to whittle down his 38-man group to a tournament-ready 33 ahead of his squad announcement a week today. 

Yet looking at the Ireland boss’s slate compared to his England counterpart’s you would much rather be Farrell this morning - and not just for the sea view.

IRELAND: H Keenan; M Hansen, Garry Ringrose, B Aki (J Crowley, 59-69 HIA), J Lowe (K Earls, 59); R Byrne (Aki 69), J Gibson-Park (C Murray, 65); A Porter (J Loughman, 72), D Sheehan (R Herring, 38), T Furlong (F Bealham, 57); T Beirne, J Ryan (C Doris, 69); P O’Mahony (J McCarthy, 53), J van der Flier, C Prendergast.

ENGLAND: F Steward; A Watson (M Smith, 69), J Marchant, M Tuilagi (O Lawrence, 61), E Daly; G Ford, B Youngs (D Care, 54); E Genge (J Marler, 54), J George (T Dan, 65), W Stuart (K Sinckler, 44), M Itoje, D Ribbans (O Chessum, 50); C Lawes (J Willis, 74), B Earl, B Vunipola.

Referee: Paul Williams (New Zealand)