By Cathal Dervan

Ireland coach Eddie O’Sullivan has told his team to forget about the Six Nations Championship and concentrate on a Triple Crown tonic against Grand Slam chasing Wales in Cardiff on Saturday.

O’Sullivan has named the side that lost to France last weekend for the trip to the Millennium Stadium and a game that can cement back to back Triple Crowns for his side.

Leinster stars Gordon D’Arcy and Shane Horgan have both failed to recover from injury in time to boost the side well beaten by the French at Lansdowne.

And O’Sullivan insists that Ireland must forget about the prospect of a first championship win in 20 years despite the fact that a 13-point winning margin could see them crowned Six Nations champions on Saturday night.

Ireland haven’t lost in Cardiff in 22 years but O’Sullivan insisted, “You have to be careful about trying to win games by a certain total — the most important thing is to win the match first. That would give us a Triple Crown. Then we’ll see what happens after that.

“It’s important to close the deal first — it would be foolish to approach it any other way. I’m sure this game will go down to the wire so we must prepare for it with the right mindset, and that means just trying to win.

“The lads have bounced back already from the French defeat. They were very down on Sunday morning but training went really well since then. The great challenge for any competitive athlete is how you deal with failure.

“It didn’t come off against France and there are two ways of dealing with that. You learn from it or suffer from it. I like to look at what England did in this situation. They lost four Grand Slam games in a row.

“They said they’d get better because of it and they did — they went on to win a Grand Slam and the World Cup. You can go backwards or forwards in this situation — you can’t stand still.”

Irish captain Brian O’Driscoll admitted it is time to take a leaf out of the French book in Wales. He said, “We have to become the Grand Slam busters ourselves in Cardiff next weekend if we are going to seal back to back Triple Crowns.

“It is not going to be easy. Like Eddie O’Sullivan said it is going to be difficult to drag ourselves back up after this French defeat but at the same time we can’t beat ourselves up over a performance like that.

“We have got to get over this disappointment and quickly. Wales will be going for the Grand Slam themselves and it is sure to be a keenly contested game. We have got to try and deny them that Slam and to do that we have to raise our performance from the French game. We know that.”

Kevin Maggs will continue as O’Driscoll’s partner in the center as O’Sullivan resists the urge to make whole scale changes for the final game of the season.

“It wasn’t a difficult team selection meeting,” he added. “Gordon and Shane have not recovered so are unavailable. Once we learned that, we knew we would be selecting the same side again.”

Reggie Corrigan (knee) and Peter Stringer (back) will undergo fitness tests in Cardiff on Friday but both are expected to play.

IRELAND: G. Murphy (Leicester); G. Dempsey (Leinster), B. O’Driscoll (Leinster, capt.), K. Maggs (Ulster), D. Hickie (Leinster); R. O’Gara (Munster), P. Stringer (Munster); R. Corrigan (Leinster), S. Byrne (Leinster), J. Hayes (Munster), M. O’Kelly (Leinster), P. O’Connell (Munster), S. Easterby (Llanelli), J. O’Connor (Wasps), A. Foley (Munster). Replacements: F. Sheahan (Munster), M. Horan (Munster), D. O’Callaghan (Munster), E. Miller (Leinster), G. Easterby (Leinster), D. Humphreys (Ulster), G Duffy (Harlequins).