Ireland captain Rory Best has said that he has absolutely no doubt that his side would respond to their 32-20 loss to England on Saturday when they head to head Edinburgh to play Scotland at Murrayfield next weekend.
Ireland were comprehensively beaten by Eddie Jones’ side in what was just the hosts second loss since the 2017 Six Nations.
England dominated Ireland with an intense and very physical performance and 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.”
England opened the scoring after just two minutes when winger Jonny May crossed for the first try of the game and Best said that Ireland never really recovered in what he described as an uncharacteristic performance from the 2018 Grand Slam winners.
“The disappointing thing for us is the way we started,” added the Ireland hooker.
“When you play internationals, away from home especially, you want to get a foothold in the game early, we let England get that and we didn’t ever get back onto the front foot. I think whenever that happens to you it’s really difficult.
“I don’t think we need wake up calls to want to improve. We’ll look at this and we’ll look at the ways we can get better.
“We prepared well and we’re prepared to go out and win a game. We’ll have to this week to make sure that whatever happened in the preparation, with all our detail, that we just didn’t get the physical edge that we’re used to getting.”
