'It's St Paddy's weekend, it will be a pretty hostile environment'

Scotland centre Chris Harris will use recent away success as inspiration when Gregor Townsend’s men look to finish their Guinness Six Nations on a high. The Scots face title-chasing Ireland in Dublin with third place in their sights. Scotland have lost ten of their last eleven meetings with Ireland and have not won in Dublin since 2010.

However, Townsend’s men have upset the odds to claim rare victories in Wales, England and France in their previous two campaigns. Scotland midfielder Harris said: “They [Ireland] have been a quality side for a long time and to play them away from home is especially hard.

“It’s St Paddy’s weekend as well so the crowd will be up for it. It will be a pretty hostile environment, I would imagine. I have only played there once with a crowd but I remember it being pretty intense. But you have got to relish that and enjoy it. We are just looking at ourselves and how we improve that and go and impose that on them.

“I’m not too bothered what the outside think, with all due respect. We have just got to look within this group and believe what we have achieved in the past. I have never been to Ireland and won and it’s been a while so that’s in the back of your mind. 

“It’s not going to be an easy game. Just because we have won a few away games doesn’t mean we just have to turn up. We have got to be on it for 80 minutes, we have got to be mentally switched on and really go after them and stick to the game-plan.”

Scotland got the bonus point against Italy on Saturday but the concession of two late tries in a 33-22 win took some shine off the triumph. Having followed up their opening win against England with defeats against Wales and France, Saturday’s game will go a long way to defining how their campaign is viewed. “You can’t dwell on things too much,” Harris said. 

“We got five points on Saturday. There was a bit of disappointment to concede a few tries but we were happy with the win and to bounce back from a pretty poor performance against France was huge. We are just purely looking forward now.

“To win would be massive, potentially the difference between finish fifth or third. It would be quality for us on a group to finish on a high from what’s been a bit of an up-and-down tournament.”

Harris goes into the game in Dublin on a personal high after notching two Scotland tries in Rome. “Scoring’s fun, isn’t it? I was delighted to get over for two,” the 31-year-old said. “It was a combined metres of five maybe with ball in hand but it was quality to score, regardless. It was quality in the set-up from Ali (Price) to go from one end to another and a lovely chip off Kyle Steyn’s shin.

“And the other one was a set-piece play that we have prepped a lot in training and never used so I finally got given the ball and scored, so it was quality from a personal point of view.”