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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
Sport
Michael Scully

Rory Best claims Ireland have had their wake-up call ahead of World Cup

Rory Best believes Ireland have had a Six Nations "wake-up call" and says the onus on the team is to start the World Cup fast.

“The coaching staff will have gone through it forensically and they will know exactly what they want when we get together again as a player group," said the Ireland skipper.

"We'll look at it as well and see what was different. Did we prepare or play differently? Did we take our eye off the ball with the World Cup?

Jacob Stockdale didn't owe anyone an apology for mistake against Leinster, says Rory Best  

“I've heard a few people refer back to '07 but the beauty of it this time is that this happened in the Six Nations beforehand.

"We've got our little wake-up call. There's no point in us going 'it happened, we'll be fine in September'. We'll look back at it and find a couple of things.

“We know we can't start the tournament slowly. If we lose the first two games then we're playing for third (in the pool) anyway. Also, we have to find a way to get that real intensity back over 80 minutes like we had before.

“We showed it against France? How good France are nobody knows but we still had that intensity and we have to find a way to get that again because the first ten minutes against Wales and the game was over".

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