The scrum has become an Achilles heel for Ireland. How can it be fixed?

It has ceased to even be the elephant in the room. There’s no hiding from it any more. The scrum has become an Achilles heel in Irish rugby, and it’s not just the international team, it is the provinces as well. It is as if everywhere you look an Irish scrum is going backwards, or airborne, or both.

One thinks back to Leinster’s early season games in South Africa. Or the carnage wreaked upon the Irish scrum by the Springboks in November. Or the indignity heaped upon John Ryan when given a helicopter view of Bath in the Rec, or Lions frontrowers Tadhg Furlong and Dan Sheehan “getting their wings” as Andy Farrell put it last Saturday.

“A few Aer Lingus flights,” admits David Kilcoyne, who had some fun at his former team-mates’ expense on his podcast, The Rugby Ruck, earlier this week. “And I’m not flying till one o’clock tomorrow, added the former Munster loosehead, who played 220 times for Munster and 56 times for Ireland in reference to his flight to London.

We meet in the Ballsbridge cafe Mister Magpie on Wednesday, across the road from where he works in aircraft leasing from his office in Aergo Capital, two days ahead of him playing in the Legends match on Friday night in The Stoop, in aid of the Lewis Moody Foundation.

“I think you have to take them all individually. Look at the South Africa game,” he says, starting with the 24-13 loss last November when Ireland conceded six scrum penalties, one of which was a penalty try, and which accounted for two of their four yellow cards.

“I don’t think you can compare any team in the world with the South African scrum. I’ve been coached under Rassie [Erasmus] and Daan Human, the [Boks] scrum coach.