Head coach Joe Schmidt said his side had been bullied at home by a rampant England in the opening round of the Guinness Six Nations, succumbing to their first championship defeat in Dublin in his six-year tenure, while rebound victories in Scotland and Italy have been on the back of far from fluent performances with Schmidt suggesting his squad had been a “bit broken” by the English defeat.

Ireland have a chance to rebuild further this Sunday when France visit the Aviva for the penultimate Six Nations game of 2019 but will do so with New Zealand boss Hansen’s assertion that: “Instead of being the hunters they are the hunted and it’s different. It’s different when you’re sitting at the top of the tree. It’s a different experience. Not many teams cope with it that well.”

Reacting to that statement, forwards coach Easterby said: “No, we don’t necessarily see it like that. Last year was an extraordinary year. We had a lot of things go our way, we made opportunities, we finished things and it was great to be part of.

“The challenge is to keep those standards and whatever happens, you’re there to be knocked off. If you’re off three or four per cent in an area, then maybe those things are highlighted more because of what you did in previous games or previous seasons.

“We’re really striving all the time to keep those standards as high as they can be in training and continually improving in games. There’s never games where you come off, no matter what the score is, and think: ‘Ah, that was perfect.’

There’s always improvements that need to be made. Clearly, we’re there to be knocked at the moment and it’s something we need to deal with but it’s not something we’re getting overly worried about.

Easterby said far from lacking in confidence, the Ireland squad had put in a training session yesterday that “was one of the best we’ve had for a good while. Some of it is individual micro-chat with players and some of it is group chat, unit chat.

“Feeky has done a lot of good work on driving the scrum and making that something we want to go after and energise the players when they get to that moment. It’s no different when we’re in that mindset in our attack, in our defence.

“When we haven’t got the ball, we want to go after a team and that’s part of our role: To make sure the players are in the right place, have got the knowledge and can then deliver with intensity and intent.

“Certainly, on today’s showing if you’re referring to what we’ve done since the Italy game, the Belfast camp was really good and we eradicated a few things we needed t. This week we’ve hit the ground running, we’ve got fresh bodies and, so far, it’s been a really energised week.”

Ireland will be without Joey Carbery and Robbie Henshaw against France through injury while hooker Sean Cronin was omitted from the 37-man squad named yesterday, appearing to have paid the price for a poor performance as a starter in Rome 10 days ago.

The 32-year-old with 68 caps was replaced in the squad by Ulster’s Rob Herring, alongside fellow hookers Niall Scannell and team captain Rory Best, but Easterby insisted the decision was made in order to assess less experienced players.

“I guess we’re looking continually to build some depth in positions. Sean has been involved in the first three games, he has started in Italy, and in a specialist position like hooker, probably only nine and maybe 10 as well where you don’t get guys playing other positions,” Easterby said. “We’re just looking to continually build some depth and find out a bit more about players that we need to work with towards what’s coming up in the next couple of weeks and the end of the year.”

As for hurting Cronin’s World Cup hopes, Easterby said: “Certainly not, no.”

There were four fly-halves named, including Carbery, with Ross Byrne added to the squad to join first-choice Johnny Sexton, and Jack Carty, who made his debut off the bench in the bonus-point victory against Italy.

Easterby said Sexton was fit to face the French despite taking a limited part in training last week but that the fourth-round fixture would perhaps come too soon for Carbery.