Ronan O'Gara says that Andy Farrell deserves time and space to keep building towards France 2023 after an encouraging Six Nations.
Ireland picked up four wins out of five, just losing to eventual champions France, over the eight week campaign that ended last Saturday.
Farrell and his players will head to New Zealand for a three Test, five game tour in the summer.
O'Gara lists the areas where the head coach will look to add crucial depth and where he must identify the pecking order of his out-halves behind Johnny Sexton with the World Cup in mind.
But what he sees is a happy camp and one that has the ability to improve still further.
“The main priority is just keep adding," said O'Gara. "Keep adding.
"Sometimes the mentality with Irish people is that they are looking to pick holes or presume there would be a big fall but that’s not necessarily the case. Just leave them off.
"They’re in good form, they have momentum, there is competition for places, the dynamic seems good.
"They are allowed have a happy camp, that exists in sport. So what you want as the head coach is competition for places and they have that in probably two-thirds of the case.
“Two-thirds is probably a bit harsh. They have it in most positions but with a few notable exceptions, maybe.
"It’s not that the competition for places isn’t there, just when you have someone like Tadhg Furlong he is very difficult to replace.
"Johnny in current form is difficult to replace but that’s probably with an asterisk too, that the guys looking to take his place are completely 'under-rugbyed'.
"It’s a position where you get better with minutes and experience and experience in big games but they haven’t got that.
"Poor old Joey has been riddled with injury and then with a Six Nations title on the line Johnny is the number one 10, so he’s not just going to be giving up easy minutes to someone else when the team plays better when the best out-half is on the pitch,
"The nearer you get to Rugby World Cup, or from now on, there will be a focus on Ireland needing to establish who their number two and three out-half is.”
O'Gara, who lives and works in France as La Rochelle's head coach, has had a good view of the develop of the newly crowned Grand Slam winners.
With Les Bleus hosting the Rugby World Cup in 18 months time, there is a lot of optimism in French rugby that the biggest prize of all can be won on home soil.
“There’s a very high feelgood factor here since the weekend," said the Corkman.
"It's different, maybe, to when they beat the All Blacks in November. There has been a sense of achievement in winning the Grand Slam.
It was something they identified with and they probably said, ‘we need to win this if we are thinking of trying to win a home World Cup’.
"Even more so than Ireland, they have such strength in depth in a lot of positions but they are still dependent on keeping their five world-class players fit to give themselves a chance.
"They have more strength in depth, there’s no doubt about that, but between Ireland and France the quality of the Test team is very similar.”
Pictured is Legendary Irish & Munster Rugby player and current La Rochelle Head Coach Ronan O’Gara at the launch of this year’s Aviva Mini Rugby Festivals in Aviva Stadium. Six camps, with over 2,000 participants, are set to take place across the country. Four provincial festivals will take place in April, before the National Festival takes places at Aviva Stadium, the Home of Irish Rugby, in May. To learn more about Aviva Mini Rugby Festivals, please visit https://www.aviva.ie/sponsorship/irfu/minirugby/
