Bernard Jackman believes that Ireland must find their own way back into form, and that motivational techniques employed by Wales and France won’t work for Joe Schmidt’s side.
The Six Nations champions are outsiders now to retain their crown, though successive wins over Scotland and Italy have given the men in green feint hopes of making the final game in Cardiff more than potentially an opportunity to deny Wales the grand slam.
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With a rest weekend in the competition coming up, Ireland have the opportunity to pore over the win in Rome, a bonus-point victory that was well below the standards set by Schmidt and his coaching team.
Errors were rife throughout and with injuries, loss of form to key players and some unconvincing displays by some looking to stake claims for a regular spot, it has some people worrying about the confidence within the squad.
"Confidence is different to self-belief," the former Ireland international told the RTÉ Rugby podcast. "Confidence can go with a missed place kick, but having that strong self-belief will decide whether you can bounce back from it.
"This Irish team have a huge amount of players with massive self belief, so Johnny Sexton or Conor Murray might be frustrated with short-term form, but there’s no doubt that they went to Rome fully confident that they could win easily and it would be an excellent performance. Unfortunately it didn’t happen, but they will back themselves against France."
The form of half-back pairing in particular has come in for extra attention. The scrum-half is still getting back to form after missing a large chunk of the season, while the Leinster out-half cut a forlorn figure when replaced with a few minutes remaining having endured a frustrating outing that included an uncharacteristic error when a restart failed to go the requisite 15 metres.
"If they [Murray and Sexton] are getting front foot ball, and everything else is going well, we don’t scrutinise that error.
"We scrutinise the individual errors that follow around that. Every nine and 10 who touch the ball 40, 50 times in a game, they are going to have those moments.
"Obviously the kick-off, he’s [Sexton] pushing that. He’s trying to get the ball back. If he’s less brave, and kicks it long, no one ever questions that."
So what can Ireland do to help boost confidence?
Wales are on the crest of a wave and chasing a grand slam after defeating England which was on the back of a gruelling week in camp, while Jacques Brunel’s decision to trust a callow half-back pairing of Antoine Dupont and Romain N’Tamack was richly rewarded against Scotland last time out.
Both those approaches are something unlikely to be used at Carton House.
"Warren Gatland didn’t over train the team going into France or Italy, but had a massive build-up for England. He spoke about it afterwards, saying he told that lads, ‘no-one is training as hard as you’. They didn’t do it for three weeks, they did it for one.
"You can imagine those Welsh players on the bus going to the Principality [against England] feeling confident from the fact that had prepped differently than they had the previous two weeks.
"Ireland can’t really go to that because we have always prepped unbelievably well, within an inch of their life. Preparation is everything. We can’t get confidence from our prep, so we must find it in different ways.
"France could do it by bringing in a new half-back pairing against Scotland.
"The big thing for us, is where we are going to find this performance? Once we get it, it will reinforce to the lads that our game plan is locked in. The way we train is perfect. It was a bad day against England and we have had two games to find our mojo.
"I think we do need to find a performance before the end of the Six Nations or there is going to be that lingering doubt going into the World Cup."
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