Roll on Saturday and the English. Our record in Twickenham goes through some poor patches but in the last 20 years we have had some incredible days there – 2006 the best of them probably, with Shane Horgan’s last-minute try capping a brilliant comeback.

We mightn’t have the golden generation at the peak of their powers as we had then, but we still have some notables in Conor Murray, Jonathan Sexton, Rob Kearney and Jamie Heaslip at full throttle. And we have old soldiers raging against the light in Messrs O’Driscoll, D’Arcy and O’Connell.

Most coaches would love the perfect mix of the young and old, fire with a bit of experienced water. When we’re winning, that’s what that mix is described as, but as soon as you lose it will be the old guard that bear the brunt. This is how Joe Schmidt has chosen to play it. He is getting a right tune out of his instruments and they’re playing for him. What I like most about Schmidt is his game-to-game planning. He appears to be playing every game on its merits, not looking for a clichéd consistency and pattern of play that most pundits call for. Schmidt has recognised quickly that you have to play the team in front of you.

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We are now adopting different game plans for different teams. The Welsh 80 minutes was not a style of rugby we are used to. If anything, it was taking a leaf from the English playbook. We dominated up front, smashed them in the tackle and on the ground and stuffed the ball up the jerseys with a very effective rolling maul. We kicked for position and applied very little width. That’s exactly what we can expect from our opposition this weekend.

Stuart Lancaster almost backed into the job at the helm of this English side and his tenure to date is a strange one. A hammering of Ireland in this fixture two years ago probably got him the job while beating us last year in the Aviva helped him keep it when a Grand Slam was passed up by Wales destroying the English in Cardiff. However, there was a win against the All Blacks in there that secured his position leading into next year’s World Cup.

It has been two steps up followed by one step back for him and their defeat at the hands of a tentative France in the first game sums up the frailty that has surrounded English rugby for the past few years. Under Lancaster they have certainly improved but they do seem to be heading towards central casting in the players they pick: huge forwards, big backs and a 10-man game. There is little subtlety to what they do and they seem intent on replicating the 2003 World Cup winning team in personnel and pattern.

That team won a World Cup, so there isn’t much wrong with trying to fit the pegs into the round holes, but along the way they are falling prey to a decent team that can punish them for their mistakes – teams like Wales last year and France this year.

Do we belong in that conversation? Well, we drew with France last year and hammered essentially the same Welsh team last Saturday week. So, yes we do.

Right, that’s the can-we-beat-them argument out of the way. Now for part two. This takes a little more believing and a huge amount of faith in Schmidt’s bravery. I suggest this because he won’t get his team to push the English off in the tackle this Saturday and Ireland cannot make the ground or win the penalties Wales conceded through our maul.

This Saturday we can do well in the lineout but our scrum will get its toughest test. We need to move England around the field like the French ultimately did and we have to break the line. We didn’t really do this against Wales. Saturday will take an element of 15-man rugby because I suspect we’re not quite there to beat them in a 10-man game. This means a couple of players have to really stand out and I’m looking for Cian Healy, Rob Kearney, Heaslip, Sexton and Murray to set the tone. While it won’t be a shootout, we’re going to need tries and individual brilliance. Those men can break tackles and offload.

The first place this game has to be won is in the dressing room and I like our chances there. Saturday is about how cute we can play it and for how long. There was a clinical doggedness to the way we stuck to the game plan against Wales that makes me think all of the squad believe already in what they are doing under Schmidt.

Every coach goes through that with his players. Then when it’s working, the team hums. The team will be asked the questions again in Twickenham on Saturday but I suspect the coach knows that tune. CL