Former captain Keith Wood feels Irish rugby lacks strength in depth and is concerned about the future of rugby in Ireland.

The former British and Irish Lion, who was capped 58 times as hooker from 1994 to 2003, is confident of success against Scotland at Croke Park on Saturday in the Six Nations, but feels long term his country could struggle.

He said: "Ireland will win. Even though we haven't been at our best we have an ability to score tries, which Scotland don't seem to have at the moment.

"Scotland have made changes but whether that will give them enough to beat Ireland, I just don't see that at the moment."

But the former Harlequins and Munster man admitted he was worried about a lack of strength in depth, particularly where the talismanic Ronan O'Gara was concerned.

He said: "We have too many foreign players playing in Ireland. We only have three teams really and a lot of foreign players in those.

"I don't have any objection to any of them playing in Ireland, the problem is that only three teams play in the European Cup. We only have a couple of centres playing who are Irish-qualified so that means we don't have the strength in depth.

"The big flaw - and maybe the only flaw - with the Irish system is that with only three teams if you suddenly have a spate of injuries then you have no players.

"We have been blessed that Ronan O'Gara has never been injured. Anything he has picked up, he has never been out for more than a week or two weeks.

"We have three out-halves (fly-half) in Ireland and one is Felipe Contepomi (of Argentina). So effectively we have two out-halves, Paddy Wallace and Ronan. If we have an injury to either of those then we are in a difficult situation.

"When I started it was an entirely amateur game. We had an All-Ireland League structure that was hugely energised, there were big crowds at matches and there were 10 or 12 teams.

"I'm not saying we should go back to that but we need a level of high quality below provincial level. We need to see more players more often. We could have difficult times in the years ahead."