Jamison Gibson-Park admits that making way for Craig Casey in Ireland’s starting team against Italy has lit a fire in him as Andy Farrell’s men look ahead to their Six Nations assignment away to England this weekend.
Casey got the nod for the round two clash as one of six changes to the team that had played so poorly and lost so convincingly to France in the opener in Paris.
It was the first time in 16 games, dating back two years, that Gibson-Park had been a replacement.
“Yeah, it probably does. I’m a competitive guy and so these kinds of things happen and I go and try to find a bit of feedback and then go out and train and compete. It’s always been my mindset and it will remain the same until I’m done.”
Gibson-Park was one of three changes made in the 53rd minute with Tadhg Beirne and Ronan Kelleher also trotting on. Jack Crowley followed a few minutes later and the bench, for the second week in a row, made an appreciable impact.
“Yeah, I suppose I was happy,” said the scrum-half. “As a bench, we spoke about trying to bring a bit of energy to the game and for the most part we did that.
“Certainly [there are] areas we can still be better at, but that was the main thing we wanted to add when coming on, was lifting the side and giving a bit of energy, and it felt as though we did that for the most part.”
Ireland continue to wax and wane through games, playing some good rugby in what Gibson-Park admits has been “patches” and there is a frustration that their best work in training is not being replicated come the weekend.
Ireland will need to be better in Twickenham. He knows that.
“There’s plenty of improvements to be had. You put yourself in England’s shoes and they’re off the back of a pretty tough loss at the weekend so they’re going to be fired up, which makes our job much tougher. To your point, yeah, we probably need to improve a little bit.”
