I grew up as an Ireland fan

NOT many people know this... I grew up supporting Ireland. I loved guys like Marcus Horan, Jerry Flannery, John Hayes and Paul O’Connell. My mate, Matt, reminded me of it the other day when he sent a photograph of me wearing a green jersey as an awkward teenager (below).

I have some Irish blood on my mother’s side of the family and I was a bit of a nonconformist. I didn’t want to be like everyone else by supporting England. It came to a head when I was 13 and giving stick to everyone cheering England when they were on TV in the clubhouse.

Let’s just say one of the firstteam players had a stern word and I’ve supported England since.

Matt enjoys reminding me about it. I’ve sorted him some Twickenham tickets for Saturday, when we know we need to be far better than we were against Scotland two weeks ago. It bugs me every time I see a photo of the brilliant Finn Russell doing his Spider-Man hands celebration.

Our review session when we got back from Edinburgh was scathing.

It’s easier for me at 33 but the new guys haven’t experienced those knockbacks. You can feel untouchable when you’re a youngster who has been riding a wave at club level.

We can’t just sweep it under the carpet. We made too many mistakes against Scotland and it became a domino effect.

We discussed mental resilience and asked: when you make a mistake, what do you do next? You can’t think, ‘I don’t want to put myself in that position in case I drop it again.’ You can’t hide at the bottom of a ruck because you don’t want to get in the defensive line in case you miss another tackle.

If you spend your time hiding — and believe me, I’ve spent enough of my career hiding — there’s no point being here.

You’re not going to last in Test rugby if you don’t want to put yourself out there. The only way you learn is by making those mistakes and putting yourself out there so you know what to do next time you’re in that situation.

Which leads me to Ireland, the No 2 team in the world. They have a very settled squad, where everyone plays the same system at their provinces. English rugby is very different. All our clubs play differently which makes it trickier coming into the international team.

Harlequins have a game plan based around moving the ball around and a Kevin Keeganstyle defence.

It’s, ‘You score three and we score four’. It’s more fun, isn’t it? But would that ever work at international level? Absolutely not. Is that an excuse? No, it’s just an advantage for Ireland that I was asked to write about!

They are a welloiled machine. There was a bit of worry about Johnny Sexton leaving but Jack Crowley has stepped up to the plate at No 10 and everyone picked up the slack.

They have three wins from three and are riding a big momentum wave. You know how they’re going to play and they are so incredibly good at it. It’s one thing knowing it, it’s another thing stopping it.

They have some friendly faces in their coaching team in Mike Catt and Andy Farrell. I know them well from their England days.

I always remember Siri going off in George Kruis’s pocket in one of Big Faz’s meetings — ‘Excuse me, can you say that again?’ — but he just rode it out. Farrell went through a tough patch in his first 18 months but he stuck to his guns. He’s a no-nonsense character, like his son Owen.

We need to put our best version on the pitch against Ireland to find out where we’re at. We were off the pace against Scotland, too many errors, and they capitalised. We need to shock them.

My goal is to do a job on Ireland at Twickenham so that when I meet Matt for a pint of Guinness, it will taste so much sweeter. I’m going to have one regardless but it tastes bitter if you lose. I want a sweet one.

‘I loved guys like Flannery, Hayes and O’Connell’