‘Win at any cost must be Scotland message against Irish’

‘Win at any cost must be Scotland message against Irish’

SNS

Six Nations: Scotland v Ireland

Date: Sunday, 9 February Kick-off: 15: 00 GMT Venue: Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh

When Scotland and Ireland meet in the Six Nations on Sunday, “emotional intensity” must be harnessed, according to Irish legend Gordon D’Arcy, before the country can topple Ireland for the first time in eight years.

The Scots have won just one of their past 15 matches against Ireland, in 2017 under Vern Cotter, and have lost 10 in a row.

Gregor Townsend’s side opened their campaign with a bonus-point win over Italy at Murrayfield, with Ireland doing likewise against England in Dublin.

D’Arcy claims that Scotland needs to use the agony of that lengthy winless run to propel their performance.

“The Scottish team talk this week, it writes itself, doesn’t it”? D’Arcy told the BBC’s Scotland Rugby Podcast.

“It’s beautifully simple and it’s win at any cost.

Ireland and Scotland will both experience the same level of emotional intensity during this game. If Scotland don’t find a way to harness that and get this one performance out of them, that will be disappointing.

“Ireland, when you’ve beaten a team X amount of times in recent years, you can’t get everybody in and go, ‘ we hate them, but we beat them last year’. So you can’t really have that same level of hatred.

D’Arcy thinks Ireland will keep dominating Scotland, but that if Finn Russell recovers from a poor performance against Italy and regains their lead, they might as well turn things around.

Scotland have shown that they can score tries against Ireland, according to D’Arcy, who won the Grand Slam with Ireland in 2009 and was the Six Nations player of the year in 2004.

” They are able to match them, they just haven’t been able to do it for long enough, consistently enough in games. And that is likely to cause some annoyance.

“I don’t think Finn Russell misfires very often, twice in a row? And he plays such a significant role for Scotland. If he fires, anything is possible. And that’s always a concern for me, with someone like him, away from home.

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Related topics

  • Scottish Rugby
  • Rugby Union

Source: BBC

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