Six Nations Scotland v Ireland: ‘Win at any cost must be Scotland message against Irish’

Scotland must harness the “emotional intensity” of trying to topple Ireland for the first time in eight years when the sides meet in the Six Nations on Sunday, according to Irish legend Gordon D’Arcy.

The Scots have won just one of their past 15 matches against Ireland, in 2017 under Vern Cotter, and have lost 10 in a row.

Gregor Townsend’s side opened their campaign with a bonus-point win over Italy at Murrayfield, with Ireland doing likewise against England in Dublin.

D’Arcy says Scotland need to use the pain of that long winless run to fuel a big performance.

“The Scottish team talk this week, it writes itself, doesn’t it?” D’Arcy told the BBC’s Scotland Rugby Podcast.

“It’s beautifully simple and it’s win at any cost.

“Ireland will not have the same level of emotional intensity for this match as Scotland will have. If Scotland don’t find a way to harness that and get this one performance out of them, that will be disappointing.

“Ireland, when you’ve beaten a team X amount of times in recent years, you can’t get everybody in and go, ‘we hate them, but we beat them last year’. So you can’t really have that same level of hatred.

“So the motivation for Ireland has to be way more dispassionate and way more clinical and almost methodical. What did Dennis Leamy call Leinster? Boringly efficient. That’s the type of performance that Ireland need.”