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Keith Wood talks lap of honour...

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Keith Wood talks lap of honour regret after denying England a 2001 Grand Slam

98FM
98FM

08:42 28 Feb 2018


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If Ireland win the Six Nations Championship but then lose the Grand Slam at the hands of England at Twickenham on St Patrick's Day, there will be a sense of anti-climax. 

It's an experience England know all about from 2001 when Ireland denied them the Grand Slam on the final matchday at the old Landsdowne Road with Keith Wood scoring a try in a 20-14 victory. 

Keith Wood talks lap of honour regret after denying England a 2001 Grand Slam

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Keith joined us on Wednesday Night Rugby alongside the Irish Independent's Ruaidhri O'Connor and he reflected on that day and had one regret from the post-match celebrations.

"It's one of those things I regret actually is leading the team for a lap of honour when we hadn't won the championship and England had. I think it was a bit disrespectful and I felt kind of bad about it after the fact," he said. 

"But I will say there was a sense of huge relief that we'd finally beaten England and we hadn't beaten them since 1994 and we'd had seven bleak, horrible years when we hadn't got one over on England and that would be the only mitigating factor." 

Keith also touched on Ireland's victory over Wales and felt that "the game was drifting away from us" at one point before Joe Schmidt's side rallied and pulled off a thrilling victory.

But he did feel Ireland were "the superior team on the day" and felt the team did "incredibly well" against a dangerous Welsh side with plenty of experience in the side.

On the question marks over defence, he also pointed out that injuries which have led to a reshuffle in certain portions of the field like the centre areas and that consequently also contributes to some of the issues. 

Keith also described the way the relatively inexperienced Andrew Porter stepped in to replace the injured Tadhg Furlong for the Wales game was "truly extraordinary".

But he also admitted that he is nervous about the Scotland game - especially after the way they defeated England - next time out: "I'm afraid of my life of Scotland".

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