Stephen Ferris reckons England will be licking their lips at the prospect of facing Ireland in the opening round of the Six Nations.

Steve Borthwick’s side, who beat Ireland 23-22 last March and finished third in the table, come to Dublin on 1 February for a round-one clash against the back-to-back champions.

The last time Ireland hosted England at the start of the championship was in 2019, when the then-defending champions under Joe Schmidt were crushed by a fired-up Red Rose outfit, a defeat that kicked off a disastrous calendar year.

Ireland won three of four Autumn Nations Series matches in November, losing to New Zealand, and beating Fiji, Argentina and Australia, the latter two in most unconvincing fashion.

England, despite November losses to the All Blacks, Wallabies and South Africa, appear an outfit on an upward trajectory and will come up against an Irish side operating without head coach Andy Farrell, who is now on Lions duty.

“I think England will be relishing the opportunity of coming to Dublin in the first weekend, and springing a big upset,” former Ulster and Ireland back row Ferris told RTÉ 2fm’s Game On.

“Over the last few weeks what has been really evident is that teams are now starting to figure out our attack and identify the options a little bit quicker.

“They are able to move off the dummy runners to get into outside channels and make the tackles, and stifle Ireland’s really good attack that has cut teams to shreds over the last couple of seasons.

“What comes with that is huge frustration, little knock-ons and unforced errors, which a couple of teams were able to do during the Autumn Nations Series.

“Steve Borthwick is under a huge amount of pressure and if they came to Dublin and got beat out the gate, I’m sure that wouldn’t go well for the rest of their Six Nations campaign.”

As to the reason for Ireland are not reaching the heights of the last two seasons, Ferris, who played 35 times for Ireland, identified a few issues.

He said: “At this moment in time they are struggling a little bit to get going, it’s really difficult to go, ‘okay, this is what’s happening on the pitch’.

“The lineout doesn’t seem as reliable as it was a couple of seasons ago.

“In their attack, they need to be able to hold down defenders a little bit longer and get themselves over the gainline a bit more, and get that ruck speed up to the level we know it can be.”