Preview: Rested Ireland to take advantage of head-start

As Johnny Sexton pointed out on Thursday afternoon, "it was always going to come down to this".

Barring a huge win for Scotland against South Africa on the opening weekend, the 7 October meeting Ireland and the Scots was certain to decide which two teams would advance from this deathly pool to the quarter-finals.

So far, Ireland have done everything that's been asked of them; two big, confidence boosting wins against Romania and Tonga got the ball rolling in September, before they held off the Springboks in an all-time World Cup classic.

The build-up to this week has been dominated by The Permutations; what Ireland need, what Scotland need, as well as the preposterous scenario in which both Ireland and Scotland could conspire to dump the Springboks out of the tournament.

The closer the game has approached, the more relaxed the Irish squad have appeared to be.

On Thursday we had Iain Henderson revealing Peter O'Mahony’s new nickname of 'The Haggard Badger’, while Friday’s captain’s run press conference between James Lowe, Tadhg Beirne and scrum coach John Fogarty was punctuated with humour about bed bugs and bad moustaches.

Either side of the trivial stuff, there’s a real sense that these Irish players are focused on the job at hand.

The bye-week after their win against South Africa has allowed Ireland to press the reset button on their World Cup, and shift themselves from the mindset of pool stage rugby to knockout rugby.

On paper, almost everything points to an Ireland win, or at the very least Ireland qualifying for the quarters.

A win or a draw would be enough to advance as pool winners, while they would also go through in first place with a losing bonus-point, providing Scotland score fewer than four tries.

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