John Fogarty went through his full repertoire of imitations as he recalled the reaction in the Ireland dressing room to the series of setbacks that hit the team in Murrayfield two years ago.
A recap.
In the round-four game against Scotland, unbeaten Ireland lost four forwards to injury, including both hookers, Dan Sheehan and Rónan Kelleher, in the opening 48 minutes, with prop Cian Healy forced to cover the scrum and wing forward Josh van der Flier throwing into the lineout.
With a potential Grand Slam on the line, Andy Farrell's side dug deep to emerge 22-7 victors ahead of the final-round home match against England, where they duly wrapped up the title.
"We’re f****d," laughed scrum coach Fogarty when asked what was going through his mind before correcting himself after a light-hearted appeal from the press officer.
"Let me try that again. 'Oh, we're in big trouble.' It was a nightmare. For me, I was in a little bit of a panic.
"I was talking to Cian Healy about, you know, 'you've got to keep the brake foot up’ and ‘will we do this and will we do that?’
"We came in at half-time and I was trying to figure it out my mind.
"And I walked into Andy, and he just goes ‘this is brilliant!’, and he was smiling and way happier in the chaos of what was happening, two hookers, ‘who's throwing the ball in and who's going to scrummage?’
"Have I done enough, have I spent enough time with Cian, how will that look? The game is on a knife edge.
"They put us under serious pressure that first half and they're in their dressing room thinking ‘we've got ‘em’, you know, and we’re thinking… there was a little bit of [worry] from me and from Paul (O’Connell, lineout coach).
"Paul isn't as cool as you might think, but we had a good plan.
"The playing group took in all the information, were calm enough to go out there and do what an Irish player does and be competitive, stay in the moment.
"All those pieces, they were very competitive, they connected, they were tight. We were tight as a group. We knew we were in a little bit of trouble, we were very connected as a group.
"That's a big point for us as we go over there, in defence and attack, in how we think when it's difficult, in how we think when we go down points, how connected we were.
"It was great to see when I'm on the field against England, there's a certain amount of pressure the guys are under.
"There’s scoreboard pressure, there’s the reality of losing some collisions, and there's a sense of acknowledging that, but also, they stayed tight, they stayed together, they had a relative calmness across the group.
"All that stuff is really important. All that stuff happened in Scotland two years ago. All that stuff needs to happen on Sunday when we inevitably have tough times."
Both teams come into Sunday's Guinness Six Nations game off winning starts: Ireland beat England 27-22, while Scotland accounted for Italy 31-19.
Ireland have a 10-match winning run over Scotland, who despite improvements under Gregor Townsend, and notable wins home and away against France and England, have yet to get the better of Sunday’s visitors.
"They came from training to scrums," explained Fogarty when asked if the edge between the teams makes it easier to focus.
"As they were changing their boots, I asked them, 'where’s your focus now, where are ye at, what performance do ye want to put out against Scotland?’
"Then we went through the plan and all our bits. The history, we want to improve our performance. That’s what drives the focus.
"There is always an intent to want to win.
"We’ll train tomorrow and we’ll certainly prepare them for threats, but as far as our attack, our set-piece, we’re focusing on our way of doing things in an Irish jersey."
"No one is talking about this guy and that guy and Scotland. It’s in the backs of their minds at the moment.
"They’ll bring a bit of that, the players when they talk about mentality as we get closer to the weekend, they’ll talk about individuals and they probably will use a little bit of that.
"Not right now: the focus is on performance and delivering our game, our way."
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