The buck stops with Caelan Doris. His words, Andy Farrell’s too. Not verbatim but in sentiment. The context is a discussion about discipline, penalty counts and the breakdown. The brief back and forth between Ireland captain and head coach is delivered with smiles, and a promise that it would be a topic on the flight from Edinburgh to Portugal.
Resilience of the Rorke’s Drift variety couldn’t mask or mitigate the self-inflicted body blows in Ireland’s defeat to South Africa in November: 18 penalties, five cards. Not that there’s any attempt to gloss over it. In discussing Ireland’s prospects ahead of their opening match in the Six Nations against France in Paris next Thursday, it was front and centre as a legacy issue.
Irish discipline in last year’s tournament was pretty go
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