Six Nations: Italy v Ireland – backs coach Andrew Goodman on Rome

Last Updated: March 11, 2025Categories: SportsBy Views: 26

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Backs coach Andrew Goodman says the response of the Ireland squad is the important thing as they attempt to bounce back from their defeat by France with a convincing win over Italy in their final Six Nations game on Saturday.

Ireland have an outside chance of retaining the title they have picked up in the past two seasons but must defeat the Italians at the Stadio Olimpico and hope that other results later in the day go their way.

France, who top the table, are at home to Scotland in the final game of the championship, while second-placed England are away to Wales.

“Come on Scotland, come on Wales, anything is possible but we have to focus on our own performance, put on a performance we can be proud of and off the back of that we’ll be hoping Finn Russell can weave some magic in France and we know how tough Wales are at home,” said Goodman.

“They [Wales] finished well at the weekend [in their defeat by Scotland] and hopefully they can take some good confidence into their game.

“We were disappointed but now we’re excited about the response we can put out. There’s another Test match this week, it’s the nature of Test rugby. You’ve just got to get back on the horse and go again.”

Goodman explained that the squad have picked themselves up after the disappointment of their comprehensive loss to Les Bleus in Dublin.

Reflecting on the defeat Goodman said it was “tough to watch and even tougher to watch back”.

“The energy was down a little bit because obviously it was a performance we weren’t proud of.

“There’s a lot of analysis that goes into it as a coach and conversations between the coaching group, that’s the first place to see where we could have been better as a group of coaches to set the players up.

“A tough couple of days but post that process, energy levels get built back up and we had to come back and bounce in today because the most important thing now is the response for the group, we want to go there and put together our best performance in the Six Nations, for our fans as well we want to go out there and give them something good to watch.”

The New Zealander confirmed that James Lowe and Ronan Kelleher were “making good progress” as they recover from back and neck injuries respectively.

“They were both on the field today [Tuesday], they were running around, so it’s looking pretty good.

Garry Ringrose returns from suspension for the game in Rome while wing Mack Hansen is available after overcoming a quad injury and Tadhg Furlong is available after recovering from hamstring and calf injuries that saw him miss Ireland’s first four Six Nations matches, plus their four Tests in the autumn.

“With Tadhg and the history of the injury we had to make sure it was right, we didn’t want to bring him back any earlier and then he have another setback.

“We’ve maybe been a little bit cautious with this one to make sure he is 100% right and that when he comes back in he’s good to go and he can feel confident and comfortable coming out to the field.”

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