DESPITE claiming RBS Six Nations wins over Italy and France Peter O’Mahony is adamant Ireland can improve further ahead of Sunday’s critical Aviva Stadium encounter with England.
Having registered nine Test victories in a row Ireland will be hoping to stretch that sequence to 10 against Stuart Lancaster’s England at the Lansdowne Road venue.
“We have quality rugby players, quality footballers so there’s plenty of potential there, we just need to unlock it,” O’Mahony says. “We’re obviously happy enough to get the wins, but I don’t think we’ve been overly happy with our performance.
“I think we’ve had two very tough games and we’ve battled them out well, but I don’t think we’ve been happy with our execution and our attention to detail. On the flip side of that it gives us plenty to work on and plenty of things to look forward to and implement. So there’s kind of a mixed feeling at the moment.”
Games in this year’s competition have been tough with O’Mahony stressing the importance teams place on being strong defensively in these key fixtures highlighting England’s organisation.
“Defences have become very good. You look at teams in the Six Nations and there’s a huge amount of line speed there. It’s quite difficult to break down teams down the middle now. I think a lot of it has become analysis-based and trying to find little glitches in what are hugely good defences.
“They are hugely well organised. As a result, they are quite hard to stop. We’re going to have to be 100% with regard to our ‘D’. You back up their hugely impressive organisation with their physicality. It’s a mix that’s hard to stop.”
