Cheers Mack! Nice way to help galvanise the troops...
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/mack ... -lghb5z9qf
The Ireland wing Mack Hansen has said that his team will be fuelled by “a fair bit of hatred” when they take on England on Saturday in Dublin.
Hansen, 24, grew up in Australia but moved to Ireland in 2021 and qualifies for the national side through his mother, who was born in Cork. He said: “I don’t know if I should say too much. There’s a fair bit of hatred, isn’t there?
“It’s good, though, because once the game is done they are good lads like everyone else.
“That shit happened . . . how long ago now? But it does add a bit of fire to the game. I was unlucky that I didn’t get to play last year, so fingers crossed I get to play next Saturday.”
Asked about the awareness in his native Australia of Ireland’s historic rivalry with England, Hansen said: “I think everybody hates England in general. It’s something I was aware of, for sure.”
On Saturday, with St Patrick’s Day festivities in full swing, a win for Andy Farrell’s side will enable Dublin to witness an Irish grand slam for the first time.
If they manage it, it will be only the fourth grand slam in their history: the most recent came with victory over England at Twickenham in 2018, nine years before that it was clinched by beating Wales in Cardiff, while the first, which came before the term “grand slam” had become commonplace, was achieved with a victory over Wales at Ravenhill in Belfast in 1948.
Ireland were firm favourites to win Saturday’s match even before England were trounced by France at Twickenham, although the raft of injuries suffered by Ireland during their victory over Scotland at Murrayfield on Sunday threatened to diminish their resources. It was confirmed on Monday that Garry Ringrose, the centre, and Iain Henderson, the lock, will miss the game against England with a head injury and a fractured forearm respectively.
The hip injury suffered by Caelan Doris, the No 8, and the shoulder injuries to the hookers, Dan Sheehan and Ronan Kelleher, will be managed in Ireland’s camp this week, but Farrell, the head coach, was forced to call up two uncapped players yesterday in Tom Stewart, 22, the Ulster hooker, and Ross Molony, 28, the Leinster lock.
There is another experienced hooker in the squad in Rob Herring, also of Ulster, who has 33 caps to his name, and started the victory over France in Dublin last month. Another hooker, Dave Heffernan, of Connacht, featured on the successful tour to New Zealand last summer, demonstrating that this is a position in which Farrell has plenty of depth.
Even without a fit hooker at Murrayfield, Ireland made the most of the situation, with Josh van der Flier, the open-side flanker, throwing into the lineout successfully five times out of seven and Cian Healy packing down in the middle of the front row. Such circumstances would have caused chaos in teams less well organised, but Ireland’s ability to cope, and the skill of their on-field leaders in maintaining the side’s direction, was yet another example of the resourcefulness that has underpinned their success under Farrell.
“We have a lot of people like [Johnny] Sexton and [Conor] Murray who’ve been around a long time and understand what you’ve got to do in those situations,” Bernard Jackman, the former Ireland hooker, told The Times’s Ruck podcast. “If we’re to win this grand slam, it’s all of those little things added together. We’re not like France where we have someone like [Antoine] Dupont or we have this massive pack and on our day we can steamroller teams.
“We’ve got a really good mix of skill, athleticism and street-smarts, that in a game that’s there to be won or lost, may be the difference. Farrell has proven to be a phenomenal head coach. What he’s done with this team is exceptional.”
Van der Flier, World Rugby’s player of the year for 2022, did more than pass muster with his delivery into the lineouts. He was also Ireland’s top tackler with 17 and was his usual influential self around the field. Although his lineout throwing had not been seen in public before, it is a back-up skill he has been working on for some time.
“When I was in the academy, I used to mess about in the gym doing hooker throws,” he said. “It’s something we’ve talked about and practised the odd time, because a hooker can get yellow-carded or you get two injuries like that. But it’s something we talk about and we have a rough plan if it happens.”
Ireland were tested in Edinburgh in ways that would have disconcerted many teams, but exhibited enough of those “street smarts” to find a way out. Farrell will need to patch up certain areas of his side after the injuries at Murrayfield before he names his team to face England but, among supporters, the plans for a first grand-slam party in Dublin are already well advanced.
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