{"id":490456,"date":"2026-02-19T16:07:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T16:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/490456\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T16:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T16:07:11","slug":"theyve-shown-blood-in-the-water-we-can-play-that-rugby-against-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/490456\/","title":{"rendered":"‘They’ve shown blood in the water… we can play that rugby against England’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Former Ireland<\/a> lock Donncha O\u2019Callaghan<\/a> believes Scotland<\/a> exposed weaknesses in England\u2019s game that Ireland can exploit on Saturday in round three of the Guinness Six Nations<\/a> at Twickenham\u2019s Allianz Stadium.<\/p>\n

Steve Borthwick\u2019s side were comprehensively beaten 31-20 against Scotland at Murrayfield in round two, where the hosts were able to completely nullify the previously vaunted aerial threat posed by their Calcutta Cup rivals.<\/p>\n

Speaking on a\u00a0For the Love of Rugby\u00a0and\u00a0<\/a>The Offload<\/a>\u00a0podcast crossover this week, the former British & Irish Lion said that England<\/a> were initially \u201cahead of everyone\u201d in terms of adapting to the new laws around escort lines, but have not \u201cevolved and moved on quickly enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

France<\/a> and Scotland were praised in terms of the way they transition, while England and Ireland have failed to keep up.<\/p>\n

However, O\u2019Callaghan said he saw signs of progress in Ireland\u2019s 20-13 victory over Italy<\/a> in Dublin, and Andy Farrell has now been provided a \u201ctemplate\u201d on how to beat England this weekend.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

England <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ireland <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what Scotland have done is they\u2019ve held up a mirror, they\u2019ve basically shown blood in the water,\u201d the 46-year-old said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think England were ahead of everyone else in the structural side of the game. When we got rid of escorts, the kicking game suited England so much, but I don\u2019t think they\u2019ve evolved and moved on quickly enough when you look at what Scotland are doing and when you look at what France are doing, Ireland haven\u2019t either. France showed two weeks ago that Ireland are off it. I think Ireland have realised that\u2019s where they need to go, there was a little improvement in that against Italy, and now if you are Andy Farrell and you are prepping that team, you have a template of what Scotland did.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can look at what France are trying to do in the game in terms of transitioning it, whereas I think England have been slow to adapt. I know this sounds a bit disrespectful, but you can read where they\u2019re at. I thought under Lee Blackett there would be more to it when it comes to attack and we saw that against Wales, but I feel the fundamental side of that kicking side hasn\u2019t pushed on in England and I think they\u2019ve left crumbs there for everyone else to see how to expose them a bit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think Andy Farrell will look at it. It\u2019s an area Ireland need to get better at, but what Scotland exposed is what Ireland can do as well. We know we can play that type of rugby against England.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Ireland lock Donncha O\u2019Callaghan believes Scotland exposed weaknesses in England\u2019s game that Ireland can exploit on Saturday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-490456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}