Farrell ready to bounce into France after ideal start in Wales

It was very much a case of 'next man up' for Ireland this week, and that was absolutely fine with Irish boss Andy Farrell after his team's opening Six Nations win in Wales, achieved without a few regular faces.

The hosts' match-day squad could count on no fewer than 99 more caps than Ireland's. But the visiting bench boasted a wealth of experience - something which Farrell needed to call on earlier than anticipated when Conor Murray was drafted in to replace the named-to-start Jamison Gibson-Park at scrum-half before kick-off.

"If you said to us before the start of the game we'd get a bonus point win and play pretty well first up knowing what was going to be coming at us emotionally, I thought we handed the day pretty well," Farrell said afterward.

"There was no panic. We lost a couple of players during the week through injury. We'd four or five players who have not played any rugby whatsoever for quite some time and two more dropped out this morning, but the squad never missed a beat.

"That's because of the prep, the hard work that we put in not just as a squad but as management etc and it stands to you when you work hard. Our prep was really good over the past 12 days. Hopefully we can dust ourselves off, recover pretty well and bounce into next week."

Ireland went over for four tries to secure the welcome bonus-point win, with Caelan Doris getting them off to the perfect start in just the second minute. The Boys in Green then weathered something of a second-half resurgence as Wales went about trimming a sizeable half-time deficit.

"Wales were good, they were powerful, determined, they looked strong," Farrell said. "We were able to stay on point ourselves and be pretty ruthless when we got down the other end of the field,