RONAN O’GARA believes the upcoming weekend is a very important one for Ireland following their difficult start to the Six Nations in Paris last Thursday.

Based in France for the majority of his post-playing career at either Racing 92 or current employers La Rochelle — he also enjoyed a stint in New Zealand with Crusaders — O’Gara was in Saint-Denis on 5 February to see Ireland lose 36-14 to Les Bleus in the opening round of the 2026 Championship.

This result has served to immediately place Andy Farrell’s men on the back-foot and this Saturday in the Aviva Stadium will see them facing an Italian side that are fresh from an impressive 18-15 round one triumph at home to Scotland. This contest will directly precede a daunting showdown against an in-form England at Twickenham Stadium on 21 February, and O’Gara feels that game being on the horizon increases the stakes ahead of this weekend’s tussle in Dublin.

“They’ve a tricky game this weekend because Italy, I think, are still underappreciated. I watched Italy against South Africa in the autumn. They created problems for South Africa, and they’ve got a really good coaching ticket. I think they’re well-drilled, I think they know where their strengths are,” O’Gara explained.

“I think they have confidence in what they do and what they want to do. Ireland have injuries, and they have a loss of confidence, which makes it difficult. Then you’ve got to go to Twickenham, and that’s always the challenge when you play France away, and you play England away.

“The way they are at the minute, there’s no point in saying otherwise, but the two home teams are the favourites. We saw that France were impressive at home, England will be impressive at home. So this weekend becomes very important for Ireland.”

While just four players from the match day 23 were making their bows in the tournament (Tommy O’Brien, Cian Prendergast, Michael Milne and Nick Timoney), Ireland were missing a number of players through injury and other factors for last week’s Six Nations opener with France.

Loosehead prop is a position where Ireland were particularly hamstrung with the Leinster triumvirate of Andrew Porter, Jack Boyle and Paddy McCarthy all sidelined. Porter is one of a number of experienced operators that Andy Farrell wasn’t able to call upon at Stade de France, and O’Gara is of the opinion that the list of Irish absentees has been downplayed in some quarters.

“When you take out [James] Lowe, [Hugo] Keenan, [Bundee] Aki, [Robbie] Henshaw. Porter, [Tadhg] Furlong and [Ryan] Baird, one or two more, Ireland have never and will never cope with that amount of talent taken out of their team.

“Yeah, there’s an argument, well, what is coming behind? There are players coming behind them, but a lot of the guys I mentioned are world-class players.

“They will always struggle when you’re missing eight of your starters every week. It’s more than half your team, I think. That has been brushed under the carpet and hasn’t been alluded to enough, if you ask me.”

Furlong has now assumed full training, however, and is expected to be available for the forthcoming bout with the Azzurri on Saturday. There will be some interesting selection calls for Andy Farrell heading into that game, not least in O’Gara’s old position of out-half — where Sam Prendergast, Jack Crowley and Harry Byrne are all currently fighting it out for the number 10 jersey.

Interestingly, the final 30 minutes of the France game saw Prendergast and Crowley sharing the field for the fifth time at international level in the past 12 months. This has led to some debate over whether both players could potentially feature in the same starting line-up for Ireland, with Crowley being a possible option at inside centre and full-back as well as out-half.

Although he sees some merit in Prendergast and Crowley forming a 10-12 axis, O’Gara — who was speaking on a Zoom call with former Welsh international Dan Biggar to promote their upcoming live show, Biggs & ROG On The FLY in association with Heineken 0.0 in Cork and Dublin — also stressed this might prove to be difficult given the robustness of the centres they would encounter in the test arena.

“It depends, I suppose, what game are you hoping to play? Are you playing Jack Crowley at 12 or are you playing Jack Crowley at 15? I presume you’re playing Sam Prendergast at 10. I don’t think his body is ready for test rugby at 12 or 15. Just because he needs to get stronger with that big frame he has,” O’Gara added.

“I think from having played 10, it’s really important that connection you have with your 12. It is so, so important, and I would have liked the idea of having two ball players, but usually your 13 in my case was always a ball player with Brian O’Driscoll.

“With Munster, it would have been [Rua] Tipoki or anyone I played with, really. It’s just in a test game, do you really only get space maybe in the last 20 [minutes]? That’s where it could become interesting, but starting with two 10s and trying to reposition one, it’s a big ask if you’re going against the modern centres.”