Best says Ireland need to be 'close to perfection' to beat England

Ireland have won just two Grand Slams in their history, in 1948 and 2009. The Natwest 6 Nations Championship has been wrapped up already, but a clean sweep is very much on the players minds as they seek to beat England.

“There’s a lot nervous energy around. You have to try to treat it like just another game. Everyone is aware of the significance, it has for Irish rugby and this group players.”

“To come here and pit ourselves against what has been the best team in the northern hemisphere for the last couple of years. It is a massive challenge for us and it is one that we are really excited about, but obviously when you play in big games you get nervous and that is what there is at the minute.”

Defeats to Scotland and France mean that England are staring down the barrel of three defeats in a championship for the first time since 2006.

“England are a quality side, anyone that disputes that – it’s madness. If you look what they’ve done over the last couple of years under Eddie Jones and especially here, they’ve yet to lose here under him and I’ve played here a few times, I know how tough it is going to be anyway.”

“I think all this talk of backlash, I think for players it is not really important – for them it’ll be about making sure they’re ready to play a game and to win a game.”

Best believes Ireland need to be ‘close to perfection’ if they’re to beat England. England’s record at Twickenham is impressive, they’ve not lost a Six Nations game at home since a 19-12 defeat to Wales in 2012, while Ireland’s last success at the stadium was in 2010, when they edged it 20-16.

“It’s incredibly tough. International rugby and probably rugby in general it’s becoming very difficult to win away from home, but especially Test matches. Outside of Rome we are the only team to win away from home, in Paris. So it shows how hard it is to win away and this place is a big fortress and there is no point trying to hide away from that.”

“It is going to be a challenge for us to make sure that we get ourselves in a position to quieten the crowd and we get the Irish, some of which will wander down the road from Cheltenham, and we get as many of them standing on their feet as we can and the only way to do that is to perform.”

Eddie Jones came into the headlines this week after a video emerged of the England head coach lamenting last year’s 13-9 defeat to the “scummy Irish”. Best said those words would not form part of his pre-match team talk.

“It’s not something we are focusing on. A lot of players have done those private Q and A’s, I’m sure he didn’t mean it to be offensive towards Ireland or Irish rugby, so if we start to be distracted with sideshows like that it takes away from what is important to us and what is important to us is 80 minutes of rugby ahead of us.”

Jacob Stockdale is the 2018 Six Nations top try scorer with six, having scored two tries against Italy, Wales and Scotland. His impressive strike rate has seen him reach 10 international tries in just eight appearances.

“Look it is hugely frustrating – already he has passed the number of tries that I have scored and I can’t see me getting back past him again!” Best joked about his Ulster teammate.

“Joe (Schmidt) is a brilliant coach and can be a really, really tough taskmaster at times and he asks a lot of you and puts you under a lot of pressure at training and there are players and there are some very good players that just can’t cope with that and to be fair to Jacob he’s not the finished article, or far from it, but he is wanting to get better and he is improving. His record as a finisher speaks for itself, it’s a phenomenal record.”

“I’ll be the first to give credit to everyone inside him, especially that backline that he’s playing on the edge of and Rob Kearney behind him helping him and that’s where your experienced players count. (Keith) Earls and Kearney in that back three helping him, making sure that he’s always positionally near enough where he needs to be and those are the little learning’s for him that he is lapping up.”