Smal: Ireland have worked on weak areas

Ireland have worked on their driving game, scrum and defence ahead of Saturday's RBS 6 Nations clash with Wales, but the key is seizing the important moments according to Gert Smal.

The Irish forwards coach admitted that Ireland had not performed quite as well as they would have liked in certain areas against England.

He told RTÉ Sport's Michael Corcoran that Ireland had worked on 'stopping opposition drives and our driving play' after finding the English pack difficult to stop in the tight at times.

The scrum has also wobbled from time to time, including last time out, and Smal added: 'You are always looking at areas where you didn't do well in previous games and obviously those are the areas the opposition will target. You spend a fair amount of time on that during the course of the week and that is exactly what we did. We believe that it (the scrum) will go better this week.

But while Ireland have found it hard in the tight, there have been no question marks about their performance out of touch: the lineout is a special area of expertise for Smal.

He added: 'We do invest a fair amount of time into our lineouts. That's where the game starts: you can't play without the ball so we want to see how clinical and clean we can execute in the lineout and on opposition ball we try to organise it so that we can spoil as much as possible.

'We want to see how much quickly we can turn over their ball and start attacking. This week in particular it is going to be quite important to attack.'

While keeping Wales on the back foot is important, Ireland have also been preparing for a Wales team that likes to play wide. The South African gave a vote of confidence to one of his colleagues: defence coach Les Kiss.

Smal said: 'Wales are a very dangerous team. They offload in the tackle and they play with a lot of width. There is a certain structure that they play that they are very confident with. It will take a huge team effort to shut them down.'

'It is as I said with the lineout. We invest a fair amount of time in it and we have one of the best if not the best defence coach in world rugby and he knows how to deal with it. We have confidence that what we do during the week will work on Saturday.'

Ultimately, he added, Saturay's clash will come down to seizing chances as they arise.

'We will look for those moments we had against England, like when Tommy Bowe scored his try. We want to experience those kind of moments as much as possible over 80 minutes. The sort of moments where players are not thinking about performance: they just perform.'