Johnny Sexton claims that Rory Best's recent criticism of Joe Schmidt's handling of the Ireland team during the World Cup was meant more as self-criticism.
Retired skipper Best stated that part of what went wrong during the World Cup was too much detail was heaped on the players coming up to games when before it was a case of the coaches taking a step back and letting the team take over.
"I spoke to Rory about that and I think an element of that was him trying to put it on himself, him trying to say that he maybe got a little bit wrong," said Sexton .
"We spoke about that. It's not that it wasn't player-driven in the past, but that we wanted it to be even more player-driven.
"That's bring driven by Faz (Andy Farrell), he wants us to do it together, for the team to be accountable to each other and very much we do something similar in Leinster where the leadership group have a strong voice with the coaches.
"We had a strong voice before but I think those comments probably got blown out of proportion with the IRFU review at the same time. It all blew up.
"What I think he was trying to do there was say the leadership group needed to be better and he needed to do more.
"I know it got pointed at Joe but that wasn't the intention of Rory, I don't think."
Ireland's Six Nations opener against Scotland will see Gregor Townsend arrive in Dublin at the end of next week with a group bent on revenge.
The Scots' World Cup hopes were blitzed in a superb opening spell by Ireland in Yokohama four months ago and will be fresh in the visitors' memories.
"Yeah they're going to be hurting, no doubt, and they're a proud nation and they will definitely bring that," said Sexton. "They'll come fired up and we've got to be ready for it.
"But I think every team is going to sort of state of mind, aren't they? Even England, (after losing the World Cup final)".
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