Shane Horgan has issued a warning to ultra-confident Ireland fans to under-estimate Scotland at their peril.

Supporters of the men in green have huge expectations going into Sunday's RBS 6 Nations opener at Murrayfield, having seen their side complete six wins out of six already this season - including defeats of Australia and Argentina.

It has been enough for Irish fans to cast their eyes ahead to home games against big guns France and England and forget that Ireland go to Edinburgh having been soundly beaten there in 2001.

On top of that the Scots are an in-form side themselves, and Horgan said: "It's far too early to be talking about playing England and France.

"We're going to concentrate very much on the Scotland game. We'd be very foolhardy to look past that."

Ireland have not won at Murrayfield for 18 years, and Horgan added: "Recent results there haven't been too favourable for us, so we'll just see how things go on Sunday and go on from there.

"The Scots scored an historic victory over South Africa at Murrayfield in the autumn. I'm sure they rated it as highly as we valued our win over Australia.

"Their win can't be forgotten, because there are not too many bad teams who beat South Africa."

Horgan is at a loss to explain Ireland's poor record in Scotland.

"We've had a couple of very difficult games up there in the last few years, and looking back over the history of the fixture it doesn't look good for Irish eyes," he admitted.

"It's very hard to know the reason why and if I did I'd probably bottle it and sell it.

"The Scots always bring a lot of passion to the game and they play that quick rucking game which can catch you off guard.

"It's very important to step up to the plate very early and try to impose a gameplan on them rather than let them do what they are best at."

Horgan insists Ireland will be well prepared for any eventuality Scotland throw at them, because Eddie O'Sullivan's squad has been working hard on the training ground since the autumn international successes.

"We went well in the autumn, and those results are in the back of our minds," he said.

"But we picked out the bad things as well as the good things from our performance and knew there was still a lot of hard work to be done.

"We had a tough week in Lanzarote just before Christmas.

"That doesn't sound very tough. But there was a lot of work done you can only do effectively in warm weather - weights and sprint training, that kind of stuff, things every team can benefit from.

"We've done a lot of hard work in our mini off-season and we hope we can bring that through to the game on Sunday."