The last time Ireland visited Allianz Stadium, in 2024, they had just equalled England’s Six Nations record of 11 straight wins and were chasing the rarefied air of back-to-back Grand Slams. <\/p>\n
Since that 23-22 defeat, however, Ireland have lost six times in 20 Tests. All six of those losses have come against the other three nations – South Africa, New Zealand and France – currently ranked higher than Andy Farrell’s side.<\/p>\n
In the 12 months since beating England in last year’s Six Nations, Ireland have lost to France (twice), the All Blacks and the Springboks by a combined 61 points. <\/p>\n
Their miserable return to Paris a fortnight ago ended with their heaviest Six Nations loss in 16 years, giving fuel to the ‘Ireland in decline’ debate. <\/p>\n
Indeed, a succession of humbling in-ring experiences with the game’s heavyweights have intensified the scrutiny on a team who have slipped to fifth in the world rankings after entering the 2023 World Cup as number one.<\/p>\n
Whether it’s been age profile, a creaking scrum, a sputtering attack, the unsettled fly-half situation or a British and Irish Lions hangover, most of the discussion has been largely negative. <\/p>\n
But from an Irish perspective, there is no better way to flip the narrative than a big win over the English, who are wounded from last week’s Calcutta Cup defeat by Scotland. <\/p>\n
Of course, having left Stade de France empty-handed before failing to secure a bonus point in the win over Italy, Ireland know another loss would dash their title hopes for another year.<\/p>\n
“I think the lads are going to be a bit annoyed at the negative chat that’s surrounding the team for the past while,” legendary Ireland scrum-half Conor Murray said on the Ireland Rugby Social. <\/p>\n
“There’s so many quality, world-class players and leaders in that team. I hope they just go there and say ‘let’s go for it here, lads, we’re sick of people talking about us in a negative light, look at the quality we have in the room.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The last time Ireland visited Allianz Stadium, in 2024, they had just equalled England’s Six Nations record of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-437188","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\/437188","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=437188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}