Former Ireland international Ronan O’Gara has said that Ireland’s opening Six Nations loss to England is not a major concern and that Joe Schmidt’s side have suffered losses in other championship winning years.
Ireland were crowned Six Nations Champions in 2014, 2015 and 2018 but went down 32-20 to England last weekend in what was their first ever loss at home under Schmidt.
Ireland will have a chance to bounce back from their defeat when they face Scotland at Murrayfield tomorrow and that for a lot of people the game against England wasn’t even in doubt heading into the opening weekend.
“It was only last year that they didn’t lose a Six Nations game,” O’Gara said on Virgin Media One’s Six o’clock show.
“We completely over-analysed it or over-appreciated it. It’s okay to lose a game. Chill out. In 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, we lost a game in the Six Nations. I suppose what hit us hard was that it was England and we don’t like that and they were good, really good.
“Last year was the first year we went unbeaten in the Six Nations in a while. It’ll be tough though. Murrayfield is a sticky place to play. I’ve never had a really good track record of results there.
“With 2018 we wiped the floor with everyone in front of us then we have England in round one and the whole of the country is going ‘we’ll get a good score’ and English fans are going ‘I hope we don’t get hammered here today’.
“The result wasn’t in doubt for a lot of people then all of a sudden we’re 60 minutes into the game and there was only winner really. It just shows you psychologically what happens if you’re a fraction off, not even a bit off, a fraction off. It’s so competitive at that level.”
England dominated Ireland with an intense and very physical performance and Ireland captain Rory Best admitted that Ireland will have to be better across the board when they meet the Scots on Saturday.
“I’ve no doubt that we’ll respond,” said Best.
“We’ll have to just take this on the chin. We were bettered by Englnad in probably all the facets of the game, we’ll get some harsh feedback, some constructive feedback from the coaches and we will build into next week and we know that we’re going to have to better, better physcially and just right across the board – it’s going to be a tough test.”
