Scotland have 'consistently grown against' Ireland

Pieter de Villiers believes Scotland have been steadily building towards a level where they are now ready to banish their Ireland hoodoo.

The Scots have lost each of their last 10 meetings with the Irish since they last defeated them in February 2017, four months before current head coach Gregor Townsend took charge.

De Villiers, who has been Scotland’s scrum coach for the past five years, declared that they are “in a good place” as they bid to end their eight-year wait for a win over Ireland in Sunday’s Guinness Six Nations showdown at Murrayfield.

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“The first thing that’s very positive is that we’ve consistently grown against them,” De Villiers said on Tuesday. “When you play one of these top teams and they’re ranked higher than you, it’s always going to take time to go and construct that win.

“You have to grow as a team and that growth sometimes comes over time. Believing in it and making sure for 80 minutes you get everything right in every department, that is what Ireland tend to do as they are very consistent in all different areas of play.

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“So that firstly is going to be important and then secondly is the belief. Going out there and really believing that we’re going to go and do it. I think the players are all in a good place with regards to that.

“We know there’s a lot of work that needs to be done when you want to go and beat a team that’s up there in the rankings, but we’re excited.

“Then it’s about going out there and performing under pressure, which is something we’ve also been growing. There’s been the odd game here and there where we haven’t so it’s important to go and make that a habit now.”

Ireland are temporarily without their head coach Andy Farrell as he focuses on leading the British and Irish Lions, while forwards Tadhg Furlong and Joe McCarthy are among those unavailable for this weekend’s match in Edinburgh. However, de Villiers played down any notion that the Irish are diminished by the absence of key personnel.

“I think it’s more important to concentrate on what we need to get right,” he said. “Ireland have shown in the past that whatever changes happen to their collective, they tend to have that collective as their strength.

“Whenever there are a couple of changes happening it doesn’t seem to pull the collective down that much. It’s important for us to be sure that we get everything we want to do right, and consistently right, to be able to go and get that win.”

Scotland added Edinburgh lock Sam Skinner to their squad on Monday and De Villiers reported a clean bill among the rest of the group following Saturday’s 31-19 win at home to Italy.

“It was a physical game, I thought Italy played well and really brought the game to us,” he said. “It wasn’t perfect, far from it. But we started well, which we wanted to do.

“We ended well, which we wanted to do, so we have to fix that middle part. But we came through that without any injuries, which shows resilience as well from a physical perspective, and that’s positive.”