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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
Sport
Michael Scully

Ireland's Call won't cause Ireland's fall - this team is ready for anything, says Peter O'Mahony

Peter O'Mahony says Ireland's Call won't cause Ireland's fall - because of the unbreakable mentality that now exists in Andy Farrell's squad.

O'Mahony, who will be restored to the starting line-up today after coming off the bench against Italy, admits the slow rendition of the song before kick-off in Rome last time out had the players singing out of time.

"Obviously the anthem is very important to us as a group and we had a well-documented chat about it, the Ireland’s Call part of it, a few weeks ago," said the Munster skipper.

READ MORE: Johnny Sexton: future plans, breaking the 6 Nations points record and the best Scots team he's faced

"We got to Italy and it was unbelievably slow and we couldn’t keep time with it - we were all over the place, there were fellas way ahead and fellas who couldn’t keep up.

"And it was comical to listen to but at the same time it was infuriating because it’s an important part of how you get up for a game but look these things happen, hopefully it won’t happen again."

And if there's a fast one pulled at Murrayfield on Sunday? Joe Schmidt and his players were thrown by 'Busgate' in 2017 when Ireland last lost there to Scotland.

"Ah, I don’t know, that’s for someone else to sort out," shrugged O'Mahony. "But we are at a point where that might have affected us a few years ago, it’s not going to affect us now."

A packed Murrayfield should provide a hot reception - but O'Mahony says Ireland are ready for the cold shoulder, too.

Farrell's squad happily trained in what the back row described as "baltic" conditions at their Abbotstown HPC yesterday.

"There was sideways rain and wind but we navigated our way through it," O'Mahony grinned.

"The forecast doesn’t look great, it's going to be cold, so it was probably no harm for us to go out and prepare like that for what it will potentially be like on Sunday."

Equally, the Scots won't be in the mood to hand their Celtic cousins a handy fourth victory on their Grand Slam march, not after losing their last seven games to Ireland.

Put aside the big World Cup pool meeting in October, there's also the small matter of a first Triple Crown since 1990 on the line for Gregor Townsend's charges in front of an expectant Edinburgh crowd.

“It’s something they obviously don’t want to have hanging over them, but that’s the way it is," said O'Mahony.

"I don’t know if teams look back like that anymore. It’s about Sunday. We are a different team to the one they played 12 months ago, same as they are a different team.

"We have done a lot of evolving and so have they.

"It’s about Sunday for us. We’re talking about keeping our championship hopes alive. There are plenty of teams who are still more than technically available to win this outright.

"We're preparing to put our best foot forward on Sunday. That’s our main goal." The battle of the breakdown will be vital, with both sides possessing impressive turnover stats - but Ireland are without their injured poacher supreme, Tadhg Beirne.

With skipper Jamie Ritchie and Hamish Watson, the Scots can count on twin terrors at the breakdown.

“It’s something that we have to have a real serious look at," O'Mahony acknowledged. "They are probably two of the best in the world at the breakdown, the poach.

"It’s something we certainly bring up and have to speak about because you have to be ultra-vigilant when these guys are around the breakdowns.”

In fact, Ritchie has been dubbed Scotland's Peter O'Mahony.

“I take it as a compliment," said the 32-year-old. "He's a seriously good rugby player.

"He has great lineout ability, very tenacious around the breakdown, very good attacking breakdown player - he's well able to play in the wide. Yeah, he is a very complete rugby player.”

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