Guinness Men’s Six Nations: England v Ireland

As the race to crown the 2024 Guinness Men’s Six Nations champions reaches the penultimate round, leaders Ireland will put their 100% record on the line against an England team smarting from their recent Calcutta Cup defeat.

2024 GUINNESS MEN’S SIX NATIONS CHAMPIONSHIP:

Saturday, March 9 –

ENGLAND (3rd) v IRELAND (1st), Twickenham Stadium, 4.45pm (live RTÉ 2/RTÉ Player/ITV 1/RTÉ Radio 1/BBC Radio Ulster/BBC Sounds/BBC Radio 5 Live/IRFU Live Blog)

Team News: Ireland head coach Andy Farrell has made one change to the team for today’s Six Nations encounter with third-placed England at a packed-out Twickenham Stadium.

Keenan has recovered from the knee injury that saw him miss the Wales match, so he returns at full-back with Ciarán Frawley, one of the try scorers in that last game, reverting to the replacements bench.

Peter O’Mahony captains the team for their round 4 trip to south west London, where a win for Farrell’s side would see them set a new Championship record of 12 consecutive victories and put them within touching distance of the title.

There is a fourth successive start for Calvin Nash on the right wing, with Keenan and James Lowe also featuring in the back-three. Robbie Henshaw and Bundee Aki, try scorers against England last March and August respectively, continue their centre partnership.

Jack Crowley, the tournament’s third top points scorer so far with 33 points, and Jamison Gibson-Park are retained as the half-back pairing.

Tadhg Furlong wins his 75th cap at tighthead, packing down again with Andrew Porter and Dan Sheehan, who has scored five tries in last five Test appearances. Joe McCarthy and Tadhg Beirne complete the tight five.

Centurion O’Mahony, Josh van der Flier and Caelan Doris make up the starting back row, and for the third time in the current campaign, the Ireland coaching team have selected a six-two split on the replacements bench.

James Ryan will unfortunately miss the rest of the Championship due to a bicep injury sustained in training, so Iain Henderson joins Ronan Kelleher, Cian Healy, Finlay Bealham, Ryan Baird, and Jack Conan as the forward reinforcements.

A debutant back in 2009, Healy is poised to become the joint-second most capped Ireland player of all-time, alongside Ronan O’Gara (128 caps). Farrell’s back-line options are Conor Murray, another of the squad’s centurions, and the versatile Frawley.

Speaking about Keenan’s return to fitness and the task at hand for his team, Farrell said: “I think it’d be a boost for any side in world rugby, he’s a world class full-back, isn’t he?

“It’s testament to him and it’s no shock to us that he’s been able to get himself back to this position to be involved this weekend. He’s been unbelievably diligent to make that happen.

“I’ve no doubt that England would have loved to have put the best performance out against Scotland and come away with the victory there. But I’ve no doubt now that over the last two weeks that concentrates their mind to have another chance to have a crack at us.

“You expect them to be at their best, and if they’re at their best you expect them to be as hard as anyone in world rugby to beat. They did very well at slowing us down last year. It wasn’t just (our) errors. The game was slow.

“Whether that was a tactic of theirs or not I don’t know, but we’ll have to expect more of the same I would have thought. We’ll take each minute as it comes.

“That’s the nature of the game. That was a year ago and then we go back a couple of weeks, against Wales, and we wanted to do better then as well, so there’s always going to be that case.”

Meanwhile, England head coach Steve Borthwick has made three changes to the side that lost the Calcutta Cup clash to Scotland, including a first start for 21-year-old Exeter Chiefs winger Immanuel Feyi-Waboso.

Fey-Waboso is rewarded for his try-scoring cameo off the bench in Edinburgh, while scrum half Alex Mitchell and lock George Martin also come into the starting XV. Leicester Tigers’ Ollie Chessum shifts to the blindside flanker berth.

Danny Care will win his 100th England cap if introduced from the bench, having made his debut back in 2008 against New Zealand at the age of 21. The evergreen scrum half will become England’s sixth male Test centurion.

Care takes his spot on the bench alongside his Harlequins team-mates, Marcus Smith, who returns from a calf injury, and Alex Dombrandt. The pair are poised for their first involvement in the 2024 Championship.

“As always, we’ve selected what we think is our strongest 23 to leave us best placed to win the game,” explained Borthwick. “Ireland are without doubt currently one of the best teams in the world, and we’ll have to be at our very best against them on Saturday.

“We’ve prepared well for what will be another classic Six Nations game at Twickenham. I’d like to pay special tribute to Danny Care who will win his 100th cap at Twickenham on Saturday.

“Danny has been a tremendous servant to English rugby and reaching this milestone is an incredible achievement. He’s a wonderful player and someone who always puts the team first.”

Guinness Men’s Six Nations Results/Fixtures

Guinness Men’s Six Nations Table

ENGLAND: George Furbank (Northampton Saints); Immanuel Feyi-Waboso (Exeter Chiefs), Henry Slade (Exeter Chiefs), Ollie Lawrence (Bath), Tommy Freeman (Northampton Saints); George Ford (Sale Sharks), Alex Mitchell (Northampton Saints); Ellis Genge (Bristol Bears), Jamie George (Saracens) (capt), Dan Cole (Leicester Tigers), Maro Itoje (Saracens), George Martin (Leicester Tigers), Ollie Chessum (Leicester Tigers), Sam Underhill (Bath), Ben Earl (Saracens).

Replacements: Theo Dan (Saracens), Joe Marler (Harlequins), Will Stuart (Bath), Chandler Cunningham-South (Harlequins), Alex Dombrandt (Harlequins), Danny Care (Harlequins), Marcus Smith (Harlequins), Elliot Daly (Saracens).

IRELAND: Hugo Keenan (UCD/Leinster); Calvin Nash (Young Munster/Munster), Robbie Henshaw (Buccaneers/Leinster), Bundee Aki (Galwegians/Connacht), James Lowe (Leinster); Jack Crowley (Cork Constitution/Munster), Jamison Gibson-Park (Leinster); Andrew Porter (UCD/Leinster), Dan Sheehan (Lansdowne/Leinster), Tadhg Furlong (Clontarf/Leinster), Joe McCarthy (Dublin University/Leinster), Tadhg Beirne (Lansdowne/Munster), Peter O’Mahony (Cork Constitution/Munster) (capt), Josh van der Flier (UCD/Leinster), Caelan Doris (St. Mary’s College/Leinster).

Replacements: Ronan Kelleher (Lansdowne/Leinster), Cian Healy (Clontarf/Leinster), Finlay Bealham (Buccaneers/Connacht), Iain Henderson (Academy/Ulster), Ryan Baird (Dublin University/Leinster), Jack Conan (Old Belvedere/Leinster), Conor Murray (Garryowen/Munster), Ciarán Frawley (UCD/Leinster).

Referee: Nika Amashukeli (Georgia)
Assistant Referees: Andrea Piardi (Italy), Craig Evans (Wales)
Television Match Official: Ben Whitehouse (Wales)

Pre-Match Quotes: Peter O’Mahony (Ireland) –

It’s about who plays better tomorrow. It’s not about anything else. It’s not about previous form or where you stand, it’s about who plays better tomorrow and that’s something that we’ve always been focused on, our performance.

“We know if we play well tomorrow we’ll be in with a shout. But if we don’t fire, this English team has incredible quality and can beat anyone on their day. It’s not long ago they were competing in the last two games of the World Cup.

“We know we’re in for a huge test tomorrow here at Twickenham, as always. For us, results, performances, you get confidence from it where you have a bit of momentum.

“But it comes down to backing up performance after performance and the best teams do that consistently, and we’ve a chance to be consistent tomorrow.

“Look, I think playing away, winning away at any stadium in this competition is incredibly tough. Look at the stats across the however many Six Nations, it’s tough to win away from home, regardless of where you are and no more so than Twickenham.

“It’s obviously a fortress of rugby for England. Certainly we’ve picked up some wins here. But you look at them and we’ve had to play unbelievably well to get the wins.
“Some unbelievable rugby that we played, and that’s what tomorrow is going to take, a special performance from the group.”

Jamie George (England) –

We believe that we’re going to win. We don’t want anyone, any opposition, to come to Twickenham and have an easy ride. We have respect for them. They’ve got brilliant players across the board.

“But this is England. This is ­Twickenham. This is home. And we’re going to defend our home, like every Englishman would. Historically (being underdogs) has worked well for us.

“Fundamentally we don’t want to go in with an underdog title when we’re playing at Twickenham. But at the same time we’re playing against a very, very good team, the best team in the world who we have the utmost respect for.

“We’ve got to do everything we can to make sure that we play the game on our terms. We want to win this game and we know that we can win this game.

“I think it’d be a huge thing for English rugby if we did because we’ve got a lot of belief from within this squad, that we’re capable of doing very, very special things.”

Pre-Match Videos –

Recent Meetings –

2021: Guinness Six Nations: Ireland 32 England 18, Aviva Stadium

2022: Guinness Six Nations: England 15 Ireland 32, Twickenham Stadium

2023: Guinness Six Nations: Ireland 29 England 16, Aviva Stadium; Bank of Ireland Nations Series: Ireland 29 England 10, Aviva Stadium

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