Ireland steering clear of Slam talk

THE IRELAND squad and management won’t be bandying about the words Grand Slam ahead of Saturday week’s Six Nations Championship clash with Scotland at Murrayfield, a game in which they hope to complete a fourth successive victory of the campaign.

Only if they are still unbeaten after their trip to Edinburgh will they then address the possibility of a clean sweep for only the second time in Irish rugby history, thereby emulating the team of 1948.

Ireland travel to Wales the following week and quite apart from any Six Nations honours that may be on offer they may also be in a position to leapfrog their hosts in the official IRB World rankings.

After last Saturday’s victory over England, Ireland remain in sixth place but have closed the gap on the Welsh – Warren Gatland’s team fell from fourth to fifth, swapping places with Argentina, after losing to France – to three tenths of a point. If Declan Kidney’s side manage to beat both Scotland and Wales they would move ahead of the latter in the rankings.

Kidney’s priority this week, though, will be to begin preparations for next week’s game against Scotland. The Ireland players arrived in Cork last night for a two-day get together that includes a training session today.

As anticipated, those who started on the bench for Ireland at Croke Park last weekend, Rory Best, Tom Court, Mick O’Driscoll, Denis Leamy, Peter Stringer, Gordon D’Arcy and Geordan Murphy, will be released to their provinces to play Magners League matches this weekend in the case of the first six, and for Murphy, the Guinness Premiership.

A spokesperson for the Ireland squad confirmed there are no injury problems that would jeopardise the participation of a player in the Scotland game arising from the very physical encounter with England.

The fallout for Martin Johnson’s team continued with the confirmation they had fallen one place in the world rankings to eighth, their lowest ever.

Maintaining what has been a familiar theme amongst the English squad in the wake of that yellow peril that has struck them down in the last four matches, tighthead prop Phil Vickery, one of two players sin-binned at Croke Park has vowed to be more careful.

“If you keep giving away penalties at some stage the referee is going to sin-bin someone – but we can’t keep talking about it, we’ve got to do something about it. And we’ve got to do something quickly because at international level that’s not good enough.

“It’s frustrating. For my sin-binning the referee said I didn’t let go and I did. I didn’t get out the way but I let go,” the semantics of the specific transgression he committed largely irrelevant.

“I don’t like giving penalties away and I did. I’ve got to get my own house in order. If we can all do that then we’ll make some progress. We know what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to listen and stop giving away penalties.”

Vickery expects to receive a pointed individual reminder when Johnson addresses the squad at training this week, ahead of their clash with France at Twickenham on Saturday week. “Johnno was very angry in the changing-room after the game and I think he had every right to be. We talked about it after Italy and Wales. We’ve got to do something about it. If we don’t it’s not much fun.”

World Ranking

1(1) New Zealand 92.68

2(2) South Africa 89.45

3(3) Australia 85.86

4(5) Argentina 81.56

5(4) Wales 81.47

6(6) IRELAND 81.18

7(8) France 80.14

8(7) England 79.68

9(9) Scotland 76.19

10(10) Fiji 75.24

(Last week’s position in parentheses)