Simon Easterby insists Ireland will cope with Wales – as well as controversial referee Wayne Barnes – when they come to Cardiff on Friday night.
The former Scarlets flanker and head coach – now in charge of Ireland’s forwards – is confident his team can inflict a third successive Six Nations defeat on Rob Howley’s side.
Ireland lost 23-16 in Cardiff two years and felt bitter about their treatment from English official Barnes, who they claim favoured Wales at the breakdown.
They still managed to win the championship that season, and could do so again by beating Wales and then England, so Easterby insists they will simply make Barnes’s influence inconsequential.
“We always try to take the referee out of the equation,” says Easterby.
“He obviously has a massive part to play in the game, but we’re looking to be disciplined at scrum and lineout time, in the contact area. . . there’s a lot going on for a referee.
“We’re not saying we want everything to be picked up, just consistency, and I think Wayne Barnes is an excellent referee.
“He has massive experience now and we feel really confident that having him in the middle at the weekend will allow the game to flow.
“We just have to make sure that we keep ourselves disciplined and with that discipline it doesn’t allow them that access into the game.
“You’ll see as the game progresses that there will be things that are picked up more than others and we have to be good enough to react to that
“We can’t come off the back of a game and say ‘this and that’, we need to make sure we deal with that in the moment, and don’t lose too much focus on what we have to do.
“We certainly didn’t give ourselves the best chance two years ago when we went there and gave them a 12-0 lead.
“So it’s important that our discipline is good across the board and we work with the referee and make sure we’re on song there, so we give (Wales) no access, because they are the sort of team that builds momentum , then they are very difficult to stop, because they have so many quality individuals who can get go-forward.”
Of course, communication with the referee isn’t the only lesson Ireland will take from that tumultuous afternoon in Cardiff two years ago.
Some of the names might have changed, but many of the issues remain the same. Once again, Wales are concerned with their wide defence after Scotland found space on the edge.
“When it comes to conceding tries, we have conceded tries on our edge, usually our right edge and one on the left side,” said defence coach Shaun Edwards.
“They were individual mistakes because they didn’t do what they practised in the build-up to the game.
“They decided to do what they wanted and not what the rest of their team-mates expected them to do.”
“There’s still more in us I think,” said Easterby. “There’s still more in our control that we can get better, and if we do that we have the makings of a maul that can be really effective.
“But we know how aggressive certain individuals in their pack are at trying to disrupt that, and they’ll also feel that two years ago they got a bit of go-forward from their maul and we didn’t manage that very well and that gave them the access to get three, six, nine points ahead; again that’s something that we’re conscious of.”
The biggest difference between this week and two years ago is that Wales are out of the title running and are coming into the final two games with their backs to the wall and under fire from fans.
“They’ll feel they’ve been performing in games. The England game in particular, they will feel like they were the better team, but England found a way to win,” Easterby said.
“They maybe felt like they threw that game away. They’re not a million miles away. They are incredibly passionate and proud, but so is every nation, and we have to go over there and match them, fire with fire. We have to match them physically, we have to be smart in the way we play the game.”