Simon Easterby says his Ireland players will need to be better against Scotland

By Ed Elliot, PA

Interim boss Simon Easterby believes Ireland’s patchy performance in their bonus-point win over England will be insufficient for victory away to Scotland.

The back-to-back Guinness Six Nations champions travel to Murrayfield on Sunday afternoon bidding to remain on course for an unprecedented third consecutive title.

Ireland launched their latest championship defence by overturning a 10-5 half-time deficit to comfortably dispatch Steve Borthwick’s side in Dublin, despite conceding two late tries amid defensive lapses in an eventual 27-22 success.

A sizeable chunk of Easterby’s squad have never suffered defeat to the Scots, with the Irish having won 14 of the last 15 meetings, dating back to 2014, including 10 in a row.

Interim boss Easterby played down the significance of that statistic as he targets improvement against dangerous hosts who have regularly toppled France, England and Australia during the reign of head coach Gregor Townsend.

“We’re always continually trying to evolve and get better, as are Scotland and they showed that in the autumn, that they can mix it with the best, which they did really well,” said Easterby.

“It (Ireland’s recent record against Scotland) is something that’s been spoken about outside of the camp but we’re just trying to focus on getting our own game in order, making sure that we deliver a better performance than we did against England because that’s what it will take to beat Scotland in Murrayfield.

“We know how hard they are up there.

“A lot of us have been there over the years as players and as coaches and certainly a good few years we didn’t have the same success that we’ve had in recent times.

“We know the motivation they’ll have – they won’t need any – but we’ve obviously got internal motivation this year in terms of what we’re trying to do.”