Best calls on senior players to set tone in chase for Slam

Captain warns team to expect England backlash Stockdale has Six Nations try record in his sights

They dominated Cheltenham for much of the week, but they lost the big one yesterday. Native River’s victory in the Gold Cup put a dampener on what had been, up until that point, a brilliant meeting for the Irish.

Rory Best, Ireland’s captain, is desperate to avoid a similarly deflating experience at Twickenham today. Having secured the 2018 Natwest Six Nations title with a game to spare, Best knows only too well how hollow that achievement will feel should Ireland lose at Twickenham on St Patrick’s Day.

Opportunities to win Six Nations Grand Slams do not come around often. Ireland have won just two in their entire history – in 1948 and again in 2009. Best, along with Rob Kearney, is the only survivor from that 2009 vintage. And he said his role, and that of Ireland’s other senior players today, would be vital, as it was in 2009, in setting the right tone against an England team smarting from consecutive defeats and desperate to end their campaign on a high note.

“In 2009, no one had experience of a Grand Slam or a championship,” Best noted. “But it was about how the senior players in the group conducted themselves, how they filled you with confidence that we were ready to go.

“There are some young guys [in this Ireland team] who will look to the likes of Johnny [Sexton], Conor [Murray] and Pete [O’mahony], [Keith] Earls, Cian [Healy], guys who have played a lot of rugby and how they are. Tomorrow at 2.45 is not the time to go into your shell.”

On the face of it, there would appear to be little chance of that happening. Ireland boast players with big-match experience throughout the team. But they also possess a number of young players – second row James Ryan and winger Jacob Stockdale, for instance (the latter needing just one more try to become the competition’s most prolific try-scorer in a single campaign) – who have never so much as experienced defeat in an Ireland shirt, let alone one at Twickenham.

Their “youthful exuberance”, Best said, would serve in turn to inspire Ireland’s older players.

“They haven’t been in games where we have lost here,” he admitted. “The older guys can feed off that a bit.”

Best, who will win his 111th cap today, was in excellent form after putting his players through their paces at Twickenham; reflective, relaxed, insightful. If his demeanour is anything to go by, England fans should be worried.

He was quick to dismiss the controversy over Eddie Jones’s leaked comments regarding the “scummy Irish”, saying he was “sure that [Jones] didn’t mean it to be offensive” and insisting that his men would not get distracted with a “sideshow like that”.

And in general he struck a respectful tone, saying Ireland would expect the team who won back-toback titles in 2016 and 2017 to turn up today, rather than the team who performed so poorly against Scotland and France.

“England are a quality side,” Best said, “anyone who disputes that... it’s madness. If you look what they’ve done over the last couple of years under Eddie Jones, especially here. They’ve yet to lose here under him and I’ve played here a few times and I know how tough it’s going to be. This place is a big fortress and there’s no point in trying to hide away from that.

“It’s important that we get ourselves in a position to quieten the crowd and we get as many of the Irish, some of whom will wander down the road from Cheltenham, standing on their feet as we can.”

But Best also radiated confidence; in himself, in his players, and perhaps most of all, in Ireland’s head coach Joe Schmidt.

Best described the famously exacting Kiwi as “just slightly madder” than usual, given the magnitude of what was at stake today. But he also noted Schmidt’s near-perfect record in finals for Leinster and Ireland, one Celtic League grand final and one Pro12 final aside.

“Unfortunately I’ve been on the receiving end of quite a few of those over the years,” Best reflected. “He just has a knack of doing things.

“As always we’ll have full confidence in his game plan and we’ll concentrate on trying to implement it as best we can.”