Paul O’Connell has described the current Scotland side as the best he has come up against as either a player or coach, as he prepares for Ireland’s Guinness Six Nations trip to Edinburgh.
O’Connell won ten of the 12 Tests he played against Scotland between 2003-2015 but, under Gregor Townsend, Sunday’s hosts have made great strides.
Now Ireland’s forwards coach, O’Connell has been impressed by Scotland in the 2021 Championship, where they beat England away in Round 1 before a narrow home loss to Wales in Round 2.
“I think it’s the best Scottish team I’ve ever gone up against as a coach or a player,” said O’Connell.
“They’re very well coached, very physical and they’ve got some real X-factor players as well – Stuart Hogg, Finn Russell. They’re in a very good place and we’re aware of the challenge.
“There’s no doubt Scotland are an excellent side. Any team coached by Gregor Townsend always attack very well. Going back to his Glasgow days they always had incredible physical edge.
“You think sometimes if a coach is into attack then his team won’t have a physical edge, but every Glasgow team I played back in the day were excellent attacking sides, but were physical as well. It’s the same with this Scottish team.
“So much good attack in the Autumn Nations Cup and the Six Nations has come from Scotland. Fantastic performance against England, excellent set-piece performance, which laid a real solid foundation for them to go on and win.”
O’Connell admits Ireland’s confidence has grown since their convincing Round 3 victory away to Italy.
The Men in Green started the Championship slowly, losing to Wales in Round 1 and then at home to France in Round 2.
Ireland have not lost to Scotland since 2017, while they finish off their 2021 campaign at home to England in Round 5.
“We’ve taken confidence, from some of the things we’ve done in the last three games,” he says.
“We’ve probably been unlucky in some regards and we haven’t helped ourselves in some regards, probably given sides a leg up when we played them (early red card versus Wales).
“That’s something we can’t do in the next few weeks. You have to be hard to beat, you can’t give things away to teams and we’ve probably done that a little bit.”
