Ireland’s Jamison Gibson-Park says the bonds built on last summer’s British and Irish Lions Tour to Australia has forged a “brotherly rivalry” between the Irish and English camps.<\/p>\n
The sides meet in their latest Six Nations encounter at Twickenham on Saturday (14:10 GMT) and both sets of players will know one another only too well with 18 Irish and 15 English on the same Lions squad last summer.<\/p>\n
While Test matches between the nations are always dominated by an age-old rivalry, Gibson-Park feels that has only grown stronger and now has something of a family feel between these groups of players.<\/p>\n
“I think there was a bit of ‘mateship’ created between us and to me, that adds to a rivalry,” the 33-year-old told reporters at this week’s news conference.<\/p>\n
“When I think of the inter-pros in Ireland, they are my favourite games to play because you know the lads. I’ve spoken on it before that it’s a brotherly kind of rivalry.<\/p>\n
“We played with these guys for two months over the summer and got to know them pretty well, some great fellas. To me, that adds to the challenge and the rivalry.”<\/p>\n
Gibson-Park had to content himself with a place on the replacements bench for Ireland’s victory over Italy in Dublin last weekend with Munster’s Craig Casey getting the nod to start.<\/p>\n
Naturally, the Leinster clubman is keen to earn his 49th Ireland cap as a starter this week but was happy to “bring energy” as a replacement last week.<\/p>\n
Ireland have gone with a bench split of six forwards and two backs in their opening Six Nations games and with that, Gibson-Park feels it is imperative for all players to be a little more versatile, even suggesting with a smile he’d be open to a different role in the backs.<\/p>\n
“It’s something we have to be over the detail and be ready to do,” he added.<\/p>\n
“It’s part and parcel of playing 6-2 but I’d love to get a run on the wing.<\/p>\n
“I enjoy it and it’s something I do a little bit of in training. The weeks I’m not playing with Leinster I try and get a run at full-back because ultimately, it can aid your game and give you more of an understanding, and I find it enjoyable.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland’s Jamison Gibson-Park says the bonds built on last summer’s British and Irish Lions Tour to Australia has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-432078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}