Walking the rest vs rust Six Nations tightrope 'tricky' for Simon Easterby

If Simon Easterby chooses to rest frontline players for the game against Wales, it would leave them without a match for 28 days between Murrayfield in round two and the Aviva Stadium in the penultimate game against France.

DOWNTIME: A reduced Ireland squad will reconvene at the IRFU's High Performance Centre this week for a short camp. Their next game is against Wales on February 22. Pic: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

Simon Easterby could not have asked for a better start to his tenure as Ireland’s interim head coach but after two bonus-points wins to start the Guinness Six Nations, now comes the difficult balancing act of what to do next.

Ireland left Edinburgh on Monday with maximum points following a dominant 32-18 victory over Scotland at Murrayfield the previous day, with two of their stiffest challenges to retaining their title for a record third year in a row successfully met.

With England and the Scots knocked off, the pivotal game of the 2025 championship remains the visit of France to Dublin in round four but that remains just less than a month away on March 8 and there is a balancing act to be performed in between if Ireland are not to lose their hard-earned momentum.

The meeting with Wales in Cardiff a week on Saturday is not to be taken lightly, not least because it is an opportunity to claim the Triple Crown. Welsh rugby is in its lowest place in living memory and showing every sign of finding new depths to plumb. Warren Gatland’s team has slumped to 12th in the World Rugby rankings, one place below Georgia, following their hammering by France in Paris in round one and last Saturday’s collapse in Italy that condemned them to a 14th consecutive Test defeat.

There will be a real temptation to mix things up in terms of selection, blood lesser used players and give game time to squad members returning from injury, all solid requirements to consider. 

Lock Joe McCarthy is expected to return to training with Leinster following his clearance to play after head injury ahead of Ireland’s opening-round win over England, while there are hopes tighthead prop Tadhg Furlong has finally shaken off the calf issue that sidelined him throughout November and resurfaced during the Six Nations preparation camp in Portugal. Fellow tighthead Tom O’Toole is also clear to return to the squad having completed the suspension he incurred after a red card against Munster on December 20.

Yet resting frontline players also presents a dilemma, effectively leaving them without a match for 28 days between Murrayfield in round two and Aviva Stadium in the penultimate game.

“Yeah, it’s a tough one,” Easterby agreed. “No one wants to give up wearing the jersey, no one wants to give up the opportunity to play and perform.

“It’s a tricky one. We’re very, very fortunate. We’ve lost a few players in the last couple of weeks, Mack (Hansen) on Thursday, but I don’t think there are many players that are going to be going ‘Do you know what? I don’t fancy playing this next game’. Or the next one.

“It will be a balance. We’ve got to make sure we keep growing the group and growing experiences and hopefully that means some will get an opportunity but obviously some others won’t.” 

With Mike Prendergast set to name his squad this week for the England v Ireland A fixture at Bristol’s Ashton Gate the day after the Six Nations clash across the Severn Bridge in Wales, Easterby may have the opportunity to give his fringe squad members gametime there and keep changes to his Test team to a minimum and the interim boss acknowledged there was no room for complacency against a wounded Welsh side playing on home soil for the first time in 2025.

“It’s difficult. There’s so much passion and support for their national team and at the moment they’re in a tough place. They weren’t particularly happy with the weather (in Rome)... once they got behind, it was hard to play in those conditions. They certainly showed that, as the game went on, they got stronger and were able to get back into the game. They just didn’t have probably long enough to do that.

“We know that it’s a hell of a place to go and play, the roof will be closed, the atmosphere will be like it is every time we play in the Millennium Stadium against Wales, 75,000 passionate people that want and will their team to success.

“I’m a big believer in making sure that we play each game as it comes and that will be no different. We’ll enjoy this week, a bit of downtime, but we’ll make sure we’ll get prepared well for that Wales challenge.” 

Easterby will enjoy a short period of downtime this week before a reduced squad reconvenes for a short camp at the IRFU High Performance Centre in Abbottstown and he can feel extremely satisfied with Ireland’s position at the top of the table with a maximum 10 points and their status as the only team still capable of completing a Grand Slam. 

The Scotland victory was a definite improvement on the previous week’s at home to England, when Ireland produced a golden period of flowing rugby between for 35 minutes that was sandwiched between an error-filled opening and a drop off in the final five minutes that saw two tries conceded. The end result though, is two wins from two.

“England at home, first game of the championship and to do what we did last week. It was nowhere near perfect but we knew that this was always going to be a pivotal game in respect of coming away from home and the history of the game and everything that we felt that we could put into place and I think it didn’t disappoint in terms of the performance from our end. It was crucial that we did what we did today and continue that momentum.” 

A fourth win on the trot for Ireland in Scotland as part of a dominant run of 11 straight victories over their Celtic rivals should not detract from the difficulties of winning away from home in the Six Nations and the same will apply in Cardiff in 12 days.