Ronan O'Gara has echoed Jonathan Sexton's call for faith in Jacob Stockdale after a patch of poor form.

O'Gara joined Monday Night Rugby, and spoke of the 24-year-old's positional strengths and why he has a good future ahead of Ireland.

Stockdale

"It is the difference between club rugby and international rugby, you have a second less with every ball," O'Gara said.

"He made a few errors, an awful lot of players make errors. It is his capacity now to rebound; it is not the first time he has made errors. The difference between good players and great players is they don't make the same errors two weeks in a row. I don't think he has made the same errors two weeks in a row.

"He has been criticised for some defensive lapses [...] but he has been international rugby for probably three years.

"The way that rugby has changed means that the winger is nearly the most important player in the defensive alignment. In previous years, it was 13 - before that, it was an up-and-out.

"Now, you play your wingers high so it means they have to hit fourth-last attack or third-last attack. So, the decision-making involved is very difficult for them."

"What happened at the weekend is that high ball is probably that high ball is a new aspect to him at 15, and pushing the ball along the floor on a wet night in Paris was new to him as well."

Character

O'Gara believes that an article written by Stockdale in the Belfast Telegraph shows character that the national team needs.

"I read his article and I thought it was a good mindset in that against New Zealand, Kieran Read knocked on his chip and that would have been a huge turning point in the New Zealand game.

"Later in the game, he executed the same skill perfectly, gets a rebound and wins the game for Ireland."

Giving up

ROG believes that any talk of Ireland stepping away from Stockdale's involvement would be a bad move.

"You can't give up on a guy. There are potentially a few ways that you can play it; he obviously needs an arm around him. Either way, you can leave him out against Wales and it wouldn't be the end of the road for him, by any means.

"There is a way of doing this, and Andy Farrell would have a great human side to him. He probably needs to understand that making an error at club level is very different to making one at test level - especially when you are the last line of defence.

"Ball is very precious in the test game."

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