England v Ireland: Lions tour ‘no excuse’ for Ireland’s level loss – Tadhg Furlong

Furlong and the Irish squad have turned their attention to Saturday’s trip to face England at Twickenham (14:10 GMT) where he is likely to come into direct contact with Lions team-mate Ellis Genge who he admits is “not someone with a Lions hangover”.

While England lost their Calcutta Cup match to Scotland, Furlong felt Steve Borthwick’s side were strong in the competition and this is an area Ireland are looking to improve on after some difficulties in their win over Italy.

“We were negative on penalties, so that was a disappointing result,” Furlong admitted.

“Italy has a good crowd and we saw what they did to South Africa in November.

“The fixes are simple things — the height, the doorway, the angles, but they did a good job of isolating the two from each other at the ceremony.”

Furlong won his 83rd appearance as a substitute against the Italians and is now among the veterans in the squad.

Ireland have suffered a number of injuries this Six Nations tournament, particularly to their strikers, resulting in a number of new faces being promoted to the starting XI and matchday squad.

Despite the painful defeat to France in the opening match and their struggles in the win over Italy, Furlong remains optimistic about the team’s progress.

He admitted, “There are players missing due to injury or retirement, and this changes the feeling of the group.”

“I remember traveling to Portugal (the pre-Six Nations training camp) and there were a lot of new faces and I was thinking ‘this looks a bit different, I feel a bit older’.

“As the weeks have gone by with younger players coming back and others returning to camp, the younger players have come out of themselves a little bit from a rugby point of view.

“Where does this lead us? The rest of the tournament will tell this story but I like where the group is headed, there is a lot of promise.”