JAMIE HEASLIP SAYS there isn’t “anything wrong” with the Irish lineout and is keen to focus on the positives ahead of the team’s crucial upcoming Six Nations clash with Scotland.
The lineout lost a number of their own throw-ins during the team’s most recent match with Wales, but Heaslip has suggested Ireland are as strong as ever in that department.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the lineout at all. If you look at the overall stats from last year, we’re in the same place we were. We didn’t execute on certain things but I don’t think there’s a problem with the lineout.”
Meanwhile, despite their winless Six Nations run continuing against England at the weekend, Heaslip is well aware of the dangers posed by Scotland.
“They have a multitude of threats. They have that core Glasgow spine, that form has carried through into the international arena.
“And they have a good set-piece from which they can launch their big ball-carriers. That can give them quick momentum and get them into shape. Their half-backs direct play [works] well and the back five in the pack can mix up the work, a good ball-carrier and then off-the-ball guys who are abrasive in the ruck. They can punish you on turnover ball.
“I wouldn’t phrase it that we would better than their back-row. We’re confident in our own ability. We would respect what they can do, sometimes one is better, sometimes it can be nullified. They can pick from a group of players, so we need more video work to assess their threats.”
He continued: “I can’t tell you the game-plan. We’ve seen some opportunities, and also some threats from them.
“They’ve a big mobile pack, especially the back five who are big units. And down the spine of the team they have a lot of the Glasgow players who are with each other all the time in the Pro12 and they have a great relationship with each other. We have to respect that threat. We spotted some opportunities.”
Asked whether Ireland needed to win more collisions than they managed against Wales, Heaslip added:
“Maybe in your opinion. In ours, [we need to] improve on certain things we didn’t do last week. But there’s a lot of things we did do well.”
And does he think of last Saturday’s loss as being part of a learning curve?
“Sometimes you can brush over things when you’re winning — we don’t do that — but sometimes it can happen. We looked at it quite analytically, in black and white, where we compounded errors through either a missed opportunity or giving them a penalty or line-break.
“So we have to realise [our mistakes] but we can’t linger. We have to move on quickly and we always knew these two weeks were going to be like that. We did defensive stuff this morning, five minutes, a lot of lads would have watched the game over the weekend. So they would have parked it and moved on.
“The video review was short and brief. We looked at some systems errors and some missed opportunities and then very quickly we moved on to the opportunities that await us this weekend.”
