Ireland are "going to kill" Wales in the Six Nations opener this weekend and the scoreline could be reminiscent of 2002's 54-10 Welsh defeat.
Those are the provocative comments from Irish pundits Ger Gilroy, Eoin Sheahan and John Duggan on Ireland's Off The Ball show.
Looking ahead to this Saturday's Six Nations opener at Dublin's Aviva Stadium, they don’t pull any punches in their assessment of Wayne Pivac’s side despite them heading across the Irish Sea as reigning Six Nations champions.
Ger Gilroy begins the effort to seemingly wind up Wales fans by saying: "We are going to kill them, this is it. Despite their fluky win in the championship last year which we all know was a complete fluke because every game they had a fluky thing that happened to them, this year it's not going to happen.
"You ride your luck occasionally and you get away with it, but they ain't getting away with it this time. They're coming to Dublin and they're getting spanked."
John Duggan interjected: "It might be a bit like 2002, I think that was 54-10, I kind of feel it's going to be like that this weekend.
"We've got a clean bill of health, they've got a huge amount of injuries and the way we played in the autumn would really bode well for us. I would say [Ireland to win by] at least 20 points."
Eoin Sheahan highlighted that Wales were a "try-scoring machine" in 2021 but doubts whether they can sustain that level of attack given so many injury-related absences this time around. The likes of Leigh Halfpenny, George North, Alun Wyn Jones, Ken Owens, Josh Navidi, Taulupe Faletau and Justin Tipuric are all absent for the trip to Dublin.
"They scored 20 tries over the course of the championship last year which is this incredible record," Sheahan said. "You have to hand it to them that that's what won them the championship - at times, swashbuckling rugby. They've had, surely, too many injuries to be able to do the same thing this year, but there has to be some part of your psyche as predictors here that's thinking 'Wales could do another Wales'."
Gilroy replied: "Wales could do a Wales, but if they do that's on us. We've got to stop letting them do this. Is our rugby culture so weird and flakey that we can't actually just continue in the vein that we've been in for the last period of time? If there hadn't been a red card last year, what would have happened in that game?
"That Welsh team was on the verge of implosion and we turned them into world-beaters. That's what can happen with Wales, their culture is so ingrained that everybody, it seems, is capable of playing great rugby in moments of crisis.
"They were in a moment of crisis and we let them back into the game. That's not going to happen this year.
"Maybe there's a red card, maybe there's a clash of heads, it's the Six Nations, it's rugby - you can't predict that's not going to happen.
"But on balance, we should beat them by 10-12 points. It could be 45-20, easily! We're better than them."
Wales, of course, beat Ireland 21-16 in Cardiff in last year's championship opener, which set Wayne Pivac's men on their run to a Six Nations title where they narrowly missed out on a Grand Slam due to French efforts in Paris.
Ireland finished third in the table behind second-placed Les Bleus, with the men in green suffering two defeats - they, too, lost to a resurgent France - before posting three wins on the bounce against Italy, Scotland and England.
As for the autumn, the Irish recorded an impressive 29-20 victory against the All Blacks alongside heavy wins over Japan and Argentina, while Wales won two from four - against Australia and Fiji - amid defeats to New Zealand and South Africa.
Last year's Wales win against Ireland came following a similarly bold prediction from Gilroy, who described Wales as "a rubbish Welsh team that we have the opportunity to go and absolutely annihilate".
"They have fallen so far in the stocks of this show that they don’t even merit a mention on the week where we are going to thrash them," he had said.
Despite those predictions not coming true, Gilroy insists last year's predictions were valid.
"We were a year early in our prognostications about us dragging Wales into the deep water and drowning the national rugby team!
"We were right about Wales last year. It was a fluke that they won the way they won last year. You can't ride your luck that much."
Those comments led to former Wales and Lions prop Adam Jones firing back and admitting that sort of "disrespect" annoyed him.
Jones told the Irish Examiner : "I saw some pundit in Ireland said they would thrash Wales
"I think that’s a bit disrespectful. Actually, it’s very disrespectful. Wales were Grand Slam champions two years ago [in 2019]. They got to the World Cup semi-finals and still have the majority of the same team.
"I think it’s disrespectful to say we’re going to get thrashed by a team which hasn’t won a Grand Slam in a while. That sort of thing does p*** me off a little bit."
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