Dan Sheehan: Ireland have full confidence in lineout plan

While Ireland's lineout struggles came into sharp focus during the Pool B win against South Africa last month, there's no great overhaul of their set-piece planned according to Dan Sheehan.

The Irish lineout has had issues on and off over the last 12 months; in their warm-up games with Italy and England they were penalised multiple times for obstruction at the maul, while they ran into severe issues against both Samoa and the Springboks, losing their opening four throws and six in total against the world champions.

The issues appeared to stem from a myriad of things; timing of the jump, the spring in the lift, an over or underthrown ball, and in one lineout against Samoa there was a breakdown in communication.

They've managed to defy their inconsistent lineout over the last year with their winning record now at 16 and counting, although they will need to significantly improve on their 66% accuracy (v South Africa) if they want to go deep in this competition.

According to Sheehan, the issues have come through their execution of the plan rather than the plan itself, and the Leinster hooker says they haven't torn up the playbook during their bye-week.

"Nothing different, there's been no new meetings or new plan, we're very confident in our plan and the way we prepare for a lineout," he said, ahead of Saturday's Pool B decider against Scotland.

"I think we were coming up against South Africa who are one of the best teams in the world, things will go wrong and we probably didn't get everything right on our part but that's just a quick review.

"There's no need to go chasing something that isn't here. We still have full confidence in our plan and way of preparing. I don't think it's a problem."

Very little of the blame for Ireland's