Lord of the Dance
Former England rugby player says 'Ireland don't have any world class players' despite Grand Slam win
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Former England rugby player says 'Ireland don't have any world class players' despite Grand Slam win

FORMER England rugby player turned pundit, Jeremy Guscott, has said that Ireland don't have any world-class players, despite Saturday's Grand Slam win.

The BBC pundit has argued that although they’re playing well as a team, the Ireland rugby squad consists of no world class players.

Ireland dominated the Six Nations competition this year, winning by 11 points and securing the Grand Slam against England at Twickenham on St Patrick’s Day with a 24-15 victory.

Guscott, who played 65 times for England, suggested in his column that the quality of the players does not reflect the achievements of the team.

“Ireland, arguably, do not have any world class players in their Grand Slam-winning squad,” he wrote.

“You could argue there are better scrum-halves and fly-halves than Conor Murray and Johnny Sexton who would get into a world XV. Tadhg Furlong is one you would argue less about. But what they do have are 23 players playing very well.”

He continued: “The brains of Ireland’s team from their back-to-back titles are still there this season, but they’ve brought in additions like Jacob Stockdale, Tadhg Furlong and Garry Ringrose.

“They’ve also played with huge accuracy – in the past two seasons, their penalty and error count has gone down and at the moment, England are failing on those counts.”

Inevitably, the comments were picked up on Twitter.