Six Nations: Italy v Ireland – backs coach Andrew Goodman on Rome

Goodman explained that the squad have picked themselves up after the disappointment of their comprehensive loss to Les Bleus in Dublin.

Reflecting on the defeat Goodman said it was “tough to watch and even tougher to watch back”.

“The energy was down a little bit because obviously it was a performance we weren’t proud of.

“There’s a lot of analysis that goes into it as a coach and conversations between the coaching group, that’s the first place to see where we could have been better as a group of coaches to set the players up.

“A tough couple of days but post that process, energy levels get built back up and we had to come back and bounce in today because the most important thing now is the response for the group, we want to go there and put together our best performance in the Six Nations, for our fans as well we want to go out there and give them something good to watch.”

The New Zealander confirmed that James Lowe and Ronan Kelleher were “making good progress” as they recover from back and neck injuries respectively.

“They were both on the field today [Tuesday], they were running around, so it’s looking pretty good.

Garry Ringrose returns from suspension for the game in Rome while wing Mack Hansen is available after overcoming a quad injury and Tadhg Furlong is available after recovering from hamstring and calf injuries that saw him miss Ireland’s first four Six Nations matches, plus their four Tests in the autumn.

“With Tadhg and the history of the injury we had to make sure it was right, we didn’t want to bring him back any earlier and then he have another setback.

“We’ve maybe been a little bit cautious with this one to make sure he is 100% right and that when he comes back in he’s good to go and he can feel confident and comfortable coming out to the field.”