Mike Catt warns that Ireland cannot afford to be passive in attack against England

“We went away from what we were really good at against Wales,” the former England international said bluntly after overseeing an open session in front of 5,000 fans at the Aviva Stadium.

“And it’s something that we’ve addressed and need to make sure we get right, hence the session today was pretty sharp.”

Coming on the back of Farrell describing the attack work as “passive” after the game, Catt’s comments were telling. Ireland need to hit their highest standards.

“We just went through the motions a little bit rather than implementing the way we wanted to play, and it was a bit disappointing in certain aspects of the game,” he said. “But, we addressed it and it’s something we have to get right for England, so we will.”

So, Ireland go into England week with their senses heightened.

There was a time when a four-try, 31-7 win over Wales would have been celebrated wildly but nowadays there’s talk of how far from perfect the team were.

And, given there’s so much room to improve, the sight of Twickenham looming in the middle distance will sharpen the minds.

England were poor against Scotland and will be hurting badly.

A former team-mate of Steve Borthwick at Bath and for England, Catt knows there’s a response coming.

“They are not going to make as many errors as they did against Scotland, believe me, they are not going to let that happen again,” Catt said.

“We’ve got to prepare ourselves for it.

“They’ve got a lot to work on in terms of their defence and their attack. It’s not just one thing that they need to do, so they’ll get there and it’s four or five weeks into the competition now and they’ll get better and better each week.

“We expect them to be a lot better than they were against Scotland.”

One of the quirkier aspects of this game is the fact that former England internationals Catt and Farrell are working on a plan to outfox ex-Ireland full-back Felix Jones, who has been on the end of rave reviews from the English set-up since he came on board as defence coach.

The former Munster coach is implementing a similar system to the one that Jacques Nienaber is deploying at Leinster.

Fourteen of the expected starting XV have been coached by Nienaber or Jones during their career, while Ireland have taken on world champions South Africa twice in the last two years and won.

“It is, yeah,” he said when asked if the English defence is similar to what the Boks bring.

“It’s very much helter skelter and it’s line-speed and it puts you under pressure and I think that’s always what we’ve thrived on as a team, especially over the last year, year-and-a-half; being able to embrace that pressure and having the skillset to be able to try and break it down.

“And that’s the challenge we have and I think the boys love that challenge when something like that gets put in front of us.

“It’s not an easy challenge. It’s one that we have to think really hard about and in the moment you’ve got to be calm enough to execute stuff.

“There’s always opportunities, but whether you can take them is another thing.

“So, it might take them seven games. It might take them four games. It make them 20 games but we’ll just play the pitch that’s in front of us and we’ll go from there.”

Catt hasn’t been in contact with Nienaber this week, but he has been milking the Leinster players for intel on what they’ve been doing.

“Obviously all the Leinster boys have been (working with him), so I’ve sat down with all of them and we’ve discussed what happens and how it happens,” he explained.

“I think if you do your homework properly, but trying to break it down is still very tough, especially with the physicality that comes with it in terms of the Springboks. The nice thing is we were able to do it.

“We’ve done it twice against a full-blown South African team so, again, we need to prepare ourselves like those matches.”

One thing Ireland can’t be is passive in attack as they were against Wales.

“No, no we can’t,” Catt said.

“That defence is coming hard and it’s only going to get harder in terms of the speed. That’s Felix’s mindset and Jacques Nienaber’s: keep going harder and that’s where we need to be composed enough to be able to play around with it a little bit.

“Any international rugby game is about emotion. It’s all about emotion.

“You’ve got to be primed at the right level for you to be able to do the big hits defensively into your attack when you’re nice and calm and controlled and make the right decisions, so emotion is the biggest thing, being controlled.”

Jack Crowley has been central to that process.

“He’s done really well,” Catt said, praising the platform the forwards have created and the influence of Jamison Gibson-Park.

“His goalkicking was exceptional. His line kicking was exceptional. How many times did he put us five metres out for an opportunity to go and score? Those are the grip moments when a young kid, him being able to exploit that sort of stuff is very good.

“He hasn’t wavered at all. He’s made the odd error but that’s alright. He’s pretty mentally strong, which is great.”