Irish rugby's new generation given personal warning by top coach in South Africa

Ireland coach John Fogarty returns to South Africa with two major targets in mind.

The first one is to sort the scrum problems that Andy Farrell's Irish pack suffered with during the drawn summer tour series.

"It wasn’t good enough," admitted the Ireland scrum coach. "It wasn’t at the level, which is so disappointing looking back on it. For me and for us as a group, we’ll look at ourselves first, around our entry, around how we transition from ‘bind’ to ‘set’. It’s something that they are excellent at – that very first part of the scrum.

READ MORE:Ireland hopeful identified as the man to drive the Emerging Ireland team in South Africa

READ MORE: Simon Easterby on Ireland's coaching structure in November before Andy Farrell's Lions sabbatical

"They’re excellent at what they do. We were aware of it going into the competition. We didn’t get our bits right and we were exposed at times.

"Andy has spoken to me and I have spoken to the players. It’s something that needs to be right. At this level, you get one or two things wrong, you can be exposed and at times, we were."

As with the first Emerging Ireland tour in 2022, Farrell is staying in Ireland and Simon Easterby, with the help of Paul O'Connell, Fogarty and new backs coach Andrew Goodman, are taking the next generation on the rank to South Africa for three character-testing games.

There is some concern over Ireland's front row stocks below the cream at the top and Fogarty has a personal message for those who are travelling to the southern hemisphere ahead of Wednesday's tour opener against the Pumas.

"I played for the provinces for 11 years and, for some of those years, I kind of sat down a little bit," the former hooker said. "Looking back on it, and hindsight is 20/20, it’s something I regret.

Emerging Ireland scrum coach John Fogarty and head coach Simon Easterby
(Image: ©INPHO/Ryan Byrne)

"I was lucky enough to be able to kick on and achieve something but you can spend a little bit of time where you’re quite happy and you kind of wait and see, ‘Will I get my opportunity?’

"You need to make things happen. We’ve got four provinces, we’ve got excellent players, sometimes you need the mentality of ‘I need to make this happen for myself’, ‘I need to continue to make this happen and not wait for an opportunity’.

"This is the beauty of this tour is to give some of those guys that we’re going to see in green an opportunity - and hopefully they’ll take something back from it.

"It’s clear now in the minds of players around the country that they need to step up. We’re four teams, one nation, we need to make sure we’re developing our own."

Get the latest sports headlines straight to your inbox by signing up for free email alerts.