The story of Busgate 2017 has been told often enough.
It's eight years and 10 games ago since Ireland last lost to Scotland, a 27-22 defeat at Murrayfield that has become infamous for Ireland’s team bus running late. When it arrived, Ireland seemingly forgot to get off it.
Joe Schmidt’s side were 14-0 down inside 20 minutes in Edinburgh that day, and despite rallying back to take the lead into the final quarter, it took too much out of the tank, as two late Greig Laidlaw penalties saw the Scots over the winning line.
There were no transport issues against England last week, but Ireland’s slow start in their win in the opening round is enough of a cautionary tale to keep Simon Easterby’s side focused on the job at hand this Sunday (live on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player).
Ireland’s struggles to get out of their own half in the first 10 minutes against England were in stark contrast to Scotland’s blistering start versus Italy, with two tries in the first eight minutes seeing them race out into a 14-0 lead.
The Ireland interim coach naturally took comfort in the fact that his side navigated their way through a sloppy period early on against England before eventually making their extra power count.
However, he knows a similarly slow start could prove fatal on Sunday, against a Scottish side who will naturally come out pumped full of adrenaline given their recent history in this fixture.
"We have to bring intent and we have to bring a start to the game that is going to be difficult for Scotland because we know how quick they started against Italy," Easterby said, ahead of his side’s departure for Edinburgh yesterday.
"I think we had that period at the start [against England] and we were a little bit under the cosh. They got seven, eight, nine minutes of pressure, whether that's just through the air or just territory and field position.
"That first 20 was important, we were down on the scoreboard, then we go up the other end and we have three or four opportunities to score close to the line and we have an avoidable penalty, which cost us seven points.
"The start of the game would have been an area where we felt we weren’t quite achieving what we wanted to achieve and obviously at half time we felt like we were in a good space.
"I think there are areas of the game, you reflect on and think, 'that could have been better and we could have done that differently’."
It’s undeniable that Scotland are a better team now than they were when Gregor Townsend took over as head coach just under eight years ago.
Wins against England have become normalised rather than novelty, and they’ve picked off France multiple times in Six Nations and World Cup warm-ups.
The issue has been marrying those big results together over the course of seven weeks, and getting out of the habit of playing up and down to the level of their opposition.
In 2021 and 2022 they followed rousing wins against England on the opening day with deflating losses to Wales, and when they finally went two from two in 2023, they then lost two in a row against France and Ireland. Last year, they won the Calcutta Cup for the fourth year in a row, before conspiring to lose to Italy in Rome the next day out.
It was put to the Easterby that the inconsistencies of this Scottish side mirror those of the Ireland team he played in 20 years ago.
"I think the game has moved on from when I was playing and the consistency that we were trying to create as a team. But, yeah, they certainly had those times when they feel like they haven't kicked on and we probably felt the same back then, that we probably underperformed and underachieved a little bit.
"That's for them to decide, whether they feel like that's the case.
"Certainly back when I was playing, we probably felt like we didn't quite achieve as much as we should've done."
Inconsistency aside, Easterby (above) is preparing for the best version of this Scotland team.
"They’ve grown under Gregor over the last three or four years to a team that have produced unbelievable performances. They’ve probably disappointed in the consistency of their performances over a period of time but they are capable of playing brilliantly and beating anyone on their day so we’re fully aware of that.
"We just know we have to be better than we were last weekend in a lot of areas because of the threats that they have in their team and their ability in particular to play attacking rugby, and also the way they can stop teams playing as well," he added.
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