Caelan Doris: Ireland need to keep evolving in Six Nations

Top of the world rankings, having knocked off the southern hemisphere big three in the last seven months, but this year's Six Nations will be about far more than fine-tuning Ireland's game, according to Caelan Doris.

Andy Farrell's side begin the championship as the favourites to win a first title since 2018, and start their campaign away to Wales under the Principality Stadium roof.

But if there's any cockiness in the Ireland camp, they only have to look at their record in Wales to come back down to earth.

Since Ronan O'Gara's Grand Slam winning drop goal in 2009, Ireland have only recorded one Six Nations win at the Principality in their last six attempts.

And with Warren Gatland back in charge, and the Welsh starting line-up loaded with 937 caps, Doris knows Ireland will be in real trouble if they allow the hosts build some early confidence.

"We've spoken quite a bit about having a fast start and hopefully not letting their crowd get in too much behind them," the number 8 said.

"Possession is big for them and territory, so an early, accurate start is going to be important for us."

Having missed Ireland's 2021 Six Nations due to concussion, this will be Doris's first visit to the Cardiff with Ireland, and he's looking forward to experiencing one of the game's great stadiums in full voice.

"I do enjoy it, yeah.

"Ideally there'll be cheers for us, but either way... I remember Johnny [Sexton] saying before that he got inspired from bums on seats, regardless of who they were cheering for. So, I think that’s quite a good message going into this one.

"Going into the Stade de France last year we'd mentioned it, but probably hadn’t fully understood the level of the noise from the warm-up right the whole way through. So, that was a