Plenty to work on for misfiring Ireland

Rugby:Brian O'Driscoll voiced his relief after Ireland narrowly avoided a first Six Nations defeat by Italy yesterday. The visitors prevailed 13-11 but were teetering on the brink of a disastrous start to the championship when full-back Luke McLean crossed to nudge Italy 11-10 ahead.

Only a drop goal by substitute Ronan O’Gara with two minutes remaining prevented the 1/8 favourites from enduring a humiliating loss in Rome. O’Driscoll stated on Friday that he felt it inevitable Italy would win the fixture one day and admitted they had gone extremely close.

“The game’s not over until it’s over and as long as you still have the ability with four minutes to go and create something, you’re still in the game,” he said. “When I said that about Italy winning eventually, it’s the same as the likes of ourselves saying that one day we’ll beat the All Blacks because we haven’t done that yet.

“I’m sure the law of averages say that when teams play that often they’ll eventually beat one another. It was very close and we were fortunate to a degree to be able to come out of it. When you’re four minutes down of course you think there’s every chance you’ll lose the game.”

O’Driscoll crossed in the 44th minute but Ireland paid the price for butchering a raft of chances with the captain himself, Keith Earls and Gordon D’Arcy guilty of making mistakes.

“We created a huge number of opportunities, it’s just we lacked the clinical edge and that was the frustrating thing,” said O’Driscoll. “Our shape was excellent at times, we threatened an awful lot and created those opportunities.

“But through bad handling and bad passing we let Italy off the hook. We shouldn’t have been in the situation we were in with five minutes to go. It comes down to individual responsibility and hopefully that’s an easy fix.

“The guys will have to look at the video, which won’t be a thing of beauty. Our shape was miles better in this game than against South Africa in the autumn. We really stretched Italy at times.”

Ireland coach Declan Kidney, who revealed Jamie Heaslip could return to face France next Sunday, refused to single O’Gara out for praise.

“It was a good team drop goal. Everyone knew what they were doing and Ronan fulfilled his part of it,” Kidney said. “Jonathan Sexton had an excellent game and we’re blessed with two excellent outside-halves.

“We have a game under our belts here. We were far from the finished article out there and we know we have a lot of work to do to become more clinical.”

Italy coach Nick Mallett insisted his side lacked the nous to complete one of the great upsets on the tournament’s history.

“The team still has to learn how to control the ball in attack. We need to be more patient,” Mallett said. “In the last two minutes of a game we are leading we can’t miss a kick-off and give the ball straight back to the opposition.

“These are small areas of experience that we will learn. We learn a lot from this defeat.”