Peter O'Mahony wants Ireland to emulate the All Blacks and embrace the favourites tag.New Zealand have been world number one 75% of the time since the rankings were introduced in 2003 and won the Webb Ellis Cup twice when favourites, in 2011 and 2015.Ireland, under Joe Schmidt, reached world number one at the end of 2018 but failed to build upon that with poor Six Nations and Rugby World Cup tournaments in the following year.Andy Farrell’s charges are now back on top of the table and it’s something that O’Mahony insists the players are better able to deal with this time.While not front at centre throughout the campaign, the Grand Slam, which would be just Ireland’s fourth in their history, was not a forbidden subject."It is not banned," said the 33-year-old, ahead of Saturday's Guinness Six Nations clash with England."I know where [the question is] coming from, I suppose in other teams we would have tried to keep it under the rug."The favourites tag, the number one in the world tag; these are things the best teams that we’ve looked at [embrace]."You look at the All Blacks, they walk into these things and face them.
That’s what we are trying to learn to do."At the same time you’ve got to back that up with performances. There’s no point in walking into things and not performing well"Our goal is to put our best foot forward every Saturday we go out and it’s no different this weekend."Ireland have a 79.4% win rate under Farrell, with 27 wins in 34 games, since taking over at the end of 2019.O’Mahony, set to win his 94th cap in Dublin on Saturday, has hailed the impact of the head coach, who has hammered home the message of rising up to various challenges."Look, Andy has put us in different scenarios lots and lots of times