Despite yet another Calcutta Cup Six Nations loss to Scotland - four in six years plus one draw - Jamie Heaslip and the rest of the RTE panel spoke positively about England after their 23-29 home loss.
The former Ireland number eight is wary of the Steve Borthwick coached outfit, and discussed their lack of playing time in the new system and familiarity issues as reasons for their disappointing start to this year's Championship.
They're going to be a different team when they come here to Ireland, and when they play France.
They're ten days together, and it's very different, they're all coming from a variety of different clubs. People kind of forget, all the Irish teams are playing very similar, the core of the Irish team and the majority of them are coming from one club, getting coached by the same person as well there.
It's not as much as a heavy lift for the national side, they tweak it, but all the teams are aligned.
They have ten days of a new system, attack, defence, there's a lot of variety being thrown at them. Yes they're quality players, and there's a lot of plusses, you kind of can see the type of shape that they're doing, you can see that they want to be direct, and that will open up a lot of space for their ball players, hence why they had a 12 and 10 combination, you have dual playmakers.
With Ireland facing England in the last game of Six Nations, we should refrain from basing England's ability on their performance today.
Jamie Heaslip Wary Of An Improving England Team
Scotland win the Calcultta Cup!
Duhan van der Merwe’s late try secures a 29-23 win over England.
Watch match reaction on @rte2 and the @rteplayer. pic.twitter.com/mN7qULVesW— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) February 4, 2023
READ HERE: Jamie Heaslip Would Include Leinster Youngster In His Current World XV
After the game, England captain Owen Farrell also brought up some of the issues that were discusses on RTE.
"We started 11 days ago. There has been massive improvement and I thought we did it in large parts. There is some stuff we need to get better at but we will look at it.
"For now, we will give credit to Scotland for sticking at it like they did. They played well and scored that try in the end but it never felt like we went away, we caused them some problems and we'll make sure we build on it.
"The thing we were gong to do, regardless of the result, was get better and we will do that. There were blips but it felt like we had good energy and were in the fight all the way through."
