IN THE end, the gulf in class between Ireland U20s, who are still on track for a Six Nations Grand Slam, and their Scottish opponents was so enormous that it was hard to read much into the game.

So while Richie Murphy, the Irish coach, was obviously pleased with how his side played, he knows there is a sterner challenge coming next week when they face England.

“Our guys were extremely clinical today, which was the challenge we had set them. It’s probably the first game we really clicked. We saw that in the first half, with some incredible tries,” he reflected afterwards.

“We’ll review that pretty hard, though. We’re always looking for areas we could get better in. In fairness to the guys, they have started to drive that themselves. There are definitely areas of our game we need to keep pushing — our restarts probably weren’t as good as we would have liked. We also lost our way for 10 minutes at the start of the second half.

“So, a couple of things there we can we can tidy up. We know it will be a different challenge (against England).”

The real fear is that a week before the big one, this 82-7 win may have been almost too easy. They ran in 12 tries and converted 11 of them with flanker Ruadhán Quinn, another off the production line of ball-carrying, powerhouse flankers, claiming three and the man of the match award.

“Ruadhán is a serious ball carrier, he’s a big back row who moves very quickly,” said Murphy in tribute. “His ball carrying is a massive strength of his and we’re lucky to be able to use that in a back row where we’ve got three really good ball carriers. We’re in a pretty good position where we’ve plenty of competition for places in that area,”

To add to the sense of uncertainty about how much to read into the game, Scotland had a lock sent off ten minutes from time and pretty much folded after that. Ireland were already cruising after passing the half-century but three late tries took it from a big win to a proper thrashing.

Which is not to say there wasn’t plenty to delight Murphy. The contact work was precise, the finishing clinical, the handling near faultless. Just when it looked as though they might be about to drop concentration levels, the replacements came off the bench with points to prove and they lifted the pace to make sure his side finished with a flourish.

“One thing I was very happy with was that they stuck to the plan and executed the stuff that we’ve been working on. We’ve been working hard on our launch attack off scrum and line out, and I think some of that came to fruition. Also the connections out in the backs and their attacking shape, they showed a really good understanding of that.

“We’ll be confident ahead of next week, because if you’re not how do the lads know? The big thing is that you look at the strengths of your team and the weaknesses and strengths of the English team. Then we try to come up with a game plan while keeping to our principles.

“So if we can do that, we’ll be in a really good place. We’re in Cork, it’s been sold out for five weeks so more than 8,000 people at the game. It’ll be a great occasion. St Patrick’s weekend as well.”