Wales’ situation is not directly comparable but Steve Tandy’s men – on a 14-game losing streak in the championship – showed signs of improvement in the second half of their defeat to France and when running Scotland close in round three’s 26-23 loss<\/a>.<\/p>\n “I’m sure in camp for them, they’ve been taking a lot of positives from that game,” Ireland skipper Doris told reporters after today’s captain’s run at Aviva Stadium.<\/p>\n “They’ve obviously had a two-week run-up like us into this.<\/p>\n “I’m sure they’ve built quite a bit of belief through how they’ve trained, through some of the pictures they’ve seen. It’s going to be a challenge.<\/p>\n “Friday night’s a pretty special time to do it as well.<\/p>\n “I think they’ve grown throughout the tournament. You can see the progression game on game.<\/p>\n “They put it up to Scotland in the most recent fixture. They started well. They’ve clearly invested a lot of time in their attack.<\/p>\n “It’s a good attack and it’s going to be a challenge for our defence. They’ve got different layers to it.<\/p>\n “They can play wide and deep, the forwards have great ability to play tips and plusses at the line and they’re very unpredictable in terms of two-sided, lots of quick taps, playing out.<\/p>\n “We saw (Louis) Rees-Zammit run the ball from deep. Tomos Williams wants to keep a high tempo, snipe, quick throw-ins, quick tap, so it’s going to be important for us to be always on and be ready for those.”<\/p>\n France top the table on 15 points ahead of their trip to Murrayfield and the visit of England in round five but Ireland will be hoping for a Les Bleus slip-up that might even result in an unlikely title shot.<\/p>\n However, what’s clearly on the table is retaining their Triple Crown.<\/p>\n “It’s game by game,” added the 27-year-old, who will win his 59th cap.<\/p>\n “It’s about performances really, to be honest with you.<\/p>\n “It’s about building on what we showed in Twickenham. There’s a lot of hard work gone in over the last couple of weeks since then and some really good training days.<\/p>\n “We’ve trained here against the [Under] 20s, which was good to get a run against them. It’s just continuing the growth of this team.<\/p>\n “We’ve got a pretty clear plan of where we want to go in terms of structures and the way we want to play and it’s about chasing that down week on week.”<\/p>\n This time last year, Ireland travelled to Wales without a single representative from Ulster and such is the impact of Richie Murphy’s side in the last 12 months that there are seven players in the matchday squad, including replacement scrum-half Nathan Doak (below), who will make his international debut.<\/p>\n “They’ve been great,” said the Mayo man of Tom O’Toole, Nick Timoney, Tom Stewart, Stuart McCloskey, Robert Baloucoune, Jacob Stockdale and 24-year-old Doak.<\/p>\n “They’ve brought proper competitiveness, which we’re building in the squad, which is great. Training has been competitive, there’s been an edge to it.<\/p>\n “Some of the Ulster boys in particular have stood out over the last couple of weeks, obviously Rob, Stu, Nick, as well as I mentioned, so, it’s good to see more of them in.<\/p>\n “[Nathan has] been great.<\/p>\n “He’s a pretty experienced player at this stage. He’s got over 100 caps for Ulster, he’s been around a little bit and he’s been in camp quite a few times as well.<\/p>\n “So he’s calm, he’s got a good head on his shoulders, he’s trained really well this week, so yeah, looking forward to seeing him off the bench tomorrow.”<\/p>\n Listen to the RT\u00c9 Rugby podcast on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>, and email us at sportpodcasts@rte.ie<\/p>\n \n Watch Ireland v Wales in the Six Nations on Friday from 7pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow a live blog on the RT\u00c9 News App and on rte.ie\/sport. Listen to commentary on an extended Inside Sport on RT\u00c9 Radio 1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Caelan Doris feels that, just like Ireland against England, Wales will feel they have a big performance in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-331310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Wales](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/0023eea6-614.jpg\"\/)
\nWales led for most of their tie against Scotland<\/p>\n![\"Six](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/0023e643-614.jpg\"\/)
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