'We had a good look at what we did against South Africa'

SPOTLIGHT: Ireland will be out to make it extremely tough for Scotland to score points in their crunch World Cup Pool B clash at Stade de France on Saturday.

The Celtic derby is effectively a shoot-out for the quarterfinals.

The Springboks have 15 points after their win over Tonga on Sunday. Ireland are sitting with 14 points, while Scotland have 10 points ahead of Saturday’s final Pool B game.

Scotland will be coming out guns blazing, but they will be up against one of the tournament’s best defences.

Ireland have the third-best defensive record across the pools, conceding 32 points so far and the Boks could only manage to score one try against them in their earlier pool match.

“We had a good look at what we did against South Africa,” said Ireland centre Robbie Henshaw.

“I think our defence, we showed some great pictures in defence but we know we can go [up] another level.

“Definitely in attack, we took some steps forward but we left some opportunities out there as well.

“Looking at everything from our set-piece line-out, how can we get better there? In the first few moments, we missed a few line-outs and that let South Africa off the hook a bit.

“Definitely we’ll break down bits like that and make sure we learn from it and we grow.”

The story continues below…

Ireland have won 12 of the last 13 meetings with Scotland, but there is no way they will be underestimating their opponents on Saturday.

“Every time we play Scotland, we know they’re going to come for us,” said Henshaw, who speaking at the team base in Tours.

“Now we can see what it means to them and what they want to chase, and what we want to chase as well in terms of getting those four [pool] wins.

“They’re going to come and have a go like they always do, through Finn Russell and getting the ball to the width.

“They’ll have a plan and we’ll just need to make sure we’re rock solid and we attack it.”

Source: Irish Rugby