‘You Could Have Put A Bet On It Being Scotland’ – Farrell On Ireland’s RWC27 Pool

Ireland and Scotland are destined to meet in the Pool stages for the third Rugby World Cup in a row following the draw made earlier today and Head Coach Andy Farrell says that the familiarity makes for a lot insight ‘both ways’.

Pool D sees Ireland pitted against their Six Nations neighbours as well as Uruguay and Portugal. The winners will then face one of the third placed teams in the newly expanded 24 team tournament. The Runner Up will likely draw France in the Round of 16 but Farrell said that the permutations cannot be a distraction.

“You can try and second-guess it and think all different permutations are going to work out in a certain way, but we know that a World Cup always throws up these type of things, that’s why we love it so much,” he said.

“I suppose you’re always looking at which side of the draw you could come out, but if you don’t look after your own side of things first and foremost then things could slightly happen a little bit differently.

“But having said that, everyone else in our pool is 100% going to be thinking in the same way.”

Asked about facing Scotland Farrell commented, “You could have put the bet on it being Scotland couldn’t you, with the way that it’s gone over the last couple of tournaments,” said the 50-year-old, who took charge of Ireland after the 2019 World Cup.

“That’s good, it’s a great fixture obviously, they know each other well and will continue to do that over the coming years.

“It’s amazing the rivalry that we’ve had over the years and who would have thought in the last couple of World Cups that we’ve met each other because we obviously meet each other in a pretty important competition, that’s the Six Nations, every single year.

“The easy thing to say for us is what we say every single time that we play Scotland, is that the respect that we have for them as an unbelievably dangerous, quality world-class side has always been the case.

“And now having worked with a lot of their players in the summer, you get to see why you feel like that. So knowing a few more guys, there’s insight there both ways.

“But over the course of two years, those things change massively as well.

“But for Uruguay and Portugal; we know a little bit about Portugal, we’ve played them once, trained against them actually a few times so we’ve followed their journey, Uruguay a little bit different and I know that Warren [Gatland] has done a bit of work there as well.

“But all in all, I was super excited actually, it got the old hairs on the skin standing up, definitely, so that’s the way it should be.”