'No scrum, no win' - Fogarty says Ireland have learned their lesson from Twickenham in 2022

After Ireland felt the full force of the English front row on their last visit to Twickenham, John Fogarty is keeping the message simple.

"No scrum, no win," the Ireland scrum coach says, repeating the French rugby mantra.

While Ireland were 32-15 winners in London in 2022, they did so in spite of a scrum that was dismantled by Eddie Jones' side, who had lost second row Charlie Ewels to a red card inside two minutes.

Ireland gave away five penalties and a free-kick off a total of nine scrums that evening, and it contributed heavily to the hosts kicking 15 points off the tee, which for 65 minutes had England within reach of a victory.

"I would hope not to replicate what happened last time around," Fogarty adds, ahead of their return to Twickenham to face England on Saturday.

"I don't want to think about having to deal with that again. This team is a good side.

"We can score some points and all that, but we want to improve every week and we want to put a better version of ourselves on the field than in the previous games.

"But I’m not letting that get into my mind."

In the week after their win at Twickenham in 2022, the Irish coaches were at pains to stress that their feedback from referee Mathieu Raynal was that he had got some of those decisions wrong, but issues around the scrum have still peppered this Ireland team in the last two years.

There has been a lot of scrutiny over the angles of Ireland loosehead Andrew Porter at the setpiece, and he fell foul of referee Wayne Barnes in the World Cup quarter-final defeat to New Zealand in October.

Again, the Ireland players and management felt hard done by with those decisions, but with the scrum battle often being more about perception than reality, there was an acceptance by Fogarty