Irish defence can cope with Scottish 'firepower', says Bernard Jackman
Bernard Jackman believes Ireland's defence has the ability to cope with Scotland’s on-fire backline.
The teams meet on Sunday afternoon (3pm, live on RTÉ) in Murrayfield after both won their opening Guinness Six Nations games.
Defending champions Ireland beat England 27-22, while Gregor Townsend’s side were good value for a 31-19 win over Italy.
Scotland’s backs, with out-half Finn Russell pulling the strings, have scored 21 of their last 27 tries with centre Huw Jones (below) helping himself to a hat-trick against the Azzurri, who missed 30 tackles in the game.
The team carried for over 1,000 metres, made seven linebreaks and beat 30 Italy defenders, while making 14 offloads.
Their handling error count was 19 compared with Ireland’s 23 in their bonus-point win at Aviva Stadium.
"It’s a proper test for us [with] the firepower they have out wide, Darcy Graham and Duhan van der Merwe, they’ve got a lot of x factor," former Ireland hooker Jackman told RTÉ’s Against the Head.
"But I think Ireland’s defence, bar those couple of late tries they conceded against England, I think we’d be quite comfortable that we’d take away their time and space.
"Huw Jones had a field day, but he won’t get anywhere like that amount of space.
"It’s up front, especially with our set-piece, our lineout, we’ll get a lot of confidence from that, we’ll have enough quality ball, hopefully, to outscore them.
"I’ve massive respect for them but it’s a game we should win."
'It's up front, especially with our set-piece, our lineout, we’ll get a lot of confidence from that, we’ll have enough quality ball, hopefully, to outscore them' @bernardjackman on where Ireland can flourish against Scotland #SixNations @IrishRugby
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