Joe Schmidt may have hinted that Ireland are out of contention for the Six Nations title but Eoin Reddan says the team are going to “keep fighting”.
Ireland have just a single point from two games, after a draw with Wales and a loss to France.
Head coach Schmidt said last Friday that the remaining fixtures may provide a chance to focus on the bigger picture, with a series of unlikely results needed to give the back-to-back champions a shot at retaining the trophy.
“It’s an opportunity for us that we haven’t really had before,” he said.
“We’ve always been right in the mix for the Six Nations and going as hard as we can in every game knowing that the differential is just as important as the result.”
But scrum-half Reddan is adamant that it’s up for grabs, and that Ireland must fight for every point when they face England in Twickenham on Saturday [4.50pm].
RTÉ Rugby analyst @AlanQuinlan1 calls for a little bit more imagination off ruck ball #againsttheheadhttps://t.co/RfKLUCocKU
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) February 23, 2016
“There’s a lot of very good teams this year and [if] you win this weekend you just don’t know where things will pan out,” the Leinster player told RTÉ Sport.
“Tries, penalties, anything is a positive so we’re going to keep fighting and see where we are Saturday evening.
“It’s obviously important for the 23, for subs, that no matter what the score is in the game, winning, losing, every point in the game is extremely important in this tournament as we know.
“Both Six Nations we’ve won, we’ve had to use the bench big time in terms of the points difference.
“In the first year against Italy we scored a good few points near the end of the game and ended up winning the competition by only a few points.
"Against Wales last year we nicked a try and then Jamie [Heaslip] stops one against Scotland.
“The cumulative effect of all that is that we won another championship.”
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