Ireland - 19 Italy - 3 One to get out of the way. What more can you say? John Kirwan, who probably began playing barefoot on wintry weekends as a whippersnapper in the Land of the Long White Cloud, spoke on behalf of all the game's die-hard traditionalists when maintaining that Saturday's conditions represented "the beauty of rugby". But years of living in Italy should have taught him that there was nothing particularly beautiful about this.

The ex-All Black coach of the Azzurri was surely closer to the mark when conceding that Saturday's weather at Lansdowne Road was more conducive to that other renowned Kiwi sport sailing than to rugby. Ireland completed a tricky job in a professional manner, and were probably as glad as everyone else when they were called ashore.

Ideally - all the more so with the gifted Geordan Murphy adding another few strings to their bow - Ireland would have liked to have passed it toward the touchlines. But, having elected to play with a swirling wind which helped kicking but made passing wide almost impossible, they had little option but to find the touchlines via the boot.

They played to their lineout and their maul, which had been every bit as potent as their talented backline heretofore, and one could hardly blame them.

It was a day for trench warfare, and this Azzurri pack aren't shy as foot soldiers. Another problem in all of this is that opposing teams have understandably cottoned on to Ireland's potency here, and the muscular, macho Azzurri pack were braced for the onslaught.

Eddie O'Sullivan bemoaned the Italians' illegal tactics here (though what else can a defending team do?) and argued the case for one or two penalty tries, as - much like the Welsh game - the first half simply revolved around Ireland's ability to get a throw-in five metres out and then convert. There wasn't much else to it.

Four times Ireland went to the five-metre mark, as much because kicking for goal at a moving target was a lottery anyhow, and four times they were repelled, even if Italy sacrificed Fabio Ongaro to the sin bin along the way.

Ironically, the belated breakthrough came from Malcolm O'Kelly stealing an opposing throw from Ongaro's understudy, Carlo Festuccia. With everyone else looking like tailor's dummies, he seemed the only one awake for the throw, never mind alert.

Again, video analysis by Mervyn Murphy and the lineout preparation of Niall O'Donovan had alerted O'Kelly and co to the ploy. "They normally throw to the prop, but he wasn't watching," smiled O'Kelly.

It's always been a criticism of O'Kelly that he's a big player easily roused for the big games, less so for occasions such as this. But you don't win 63 caps by being inconsistent, and equalling Willie John McBride's Irish record for a lock made this a big day for him.

"Malcolm is a very intelligent man," commented Declan Kidney afterwards. "He exudes a laid-back character but he's not really and I think he knew the honour that was in it for him today. It was a big day for him and it's a measure of him. He has 60-odd caps and yet he's only 29. For a second-row, he could be coming into his best three years."

O'Kelly did exude a disarming sense of modesty about his landmark day. "It's a great honour to be in the same standing as him but I don't think I would have survived in his era as much as he would have survived in this era. To mention McBride's record and Malcolm O'Kelly's record at the same is fantastic."

An inordinately high 11 ball-carries, with plenty of aggressive leg-pumping, along with 11 tackles were testimony to O'Kelly's work-rate outside of his customary load at lineouts and restarts. He couldn't have marked the occasion in a grander manner, and next week offers the chance to eclipse the great man and win a Triple Crown on the same day.

There were other big performances too. The teak-tough Anthony Foley, honed in the Munster school of hard knocks, was just the player for this one.

Alongside him, Simon Easterby and Keith Gleeson helped eclipse an Italian back row which sorely missed the dynamism and handling skills of Sergio Parisse. Each adorned his customary work at the breakdown and in defence with penetrating ball carries and, typically of Gleeson, clever decisions on the ball.

And then there was Brian O'Driscoll. You always felt there would be a retort to the criticisms of his patchy performance against England. Flashy character though he is, O'Driscoll has never been one to shirk the murkier, muckier side of his duties, and he almost seemed to revel in the demands made of him here.

There were 10 ball-carries and, as he always seems to do, he led the way in the invaluable currency of tackle offloads with five, aside of course from his try - a touch of class.

Switching to the blind side, there seemed nothing on even for him, but whether by instinct or design he was locating a posse of Italian forwards.

O'Kelly's decoy run also helped check Scott Palmer and Marco Bortolami, enabling O'Driscoll to score a classic centre's try by taking Ongaro on the outside.

It gave Ireland invaluable breathing space, as did Denis Dallan's failure to hold on to an offload from Bortolami at a time when Italy would have been entitled to sniff blood.

Shane Horgan scoring under the posts off Ronan O'Gara's cut-out pass subsequently sealed it, though you never really sensed there was a shock on.

Italy are fiercely competitive at scrum time, even deliberately throwing down the gauntlet into the wind by giving Ireland a scrum on halfway from the kick-off, in the mauls and the breakdown.

Mark Ella has been brought in to improve their back play but a carpenter needs decent wood, and not only do they run in straight lines, they think in straight lines. Aside from lacking pace out wide, they've no playmaker, and Roland de Marigny is patently not the answer.

But when all your outhalves in your domestic league are overseas imports, what more can you expect? The Azzurri can keep on bursting a gut, but this will always hold them back.Lansdowne Road

Match statistics

SCORING SEQUENCE

26 mins: O'Kelly try 5-0

33: O'Driscoll try, O'Gara con 12-0

53: Horgan try, O'Gara con 19-0

68: De Marigny pen 19-3

IRELAND: G Dempsey (Leinster); S Horgan (Leinster), G D'Arcy (Leinster), B O'Driscoll (Leinster, capt), G Murphy (Leicester); R O'Gara (Munster), P Stringer (Munster); R Corrigan (Leinster), S Byrne (Leinster), J Hayes (Munster), M O'Kelly (Leinster), D O'Callaghan (Munster), S Easterby (Llanelli), K Gleeson (Leinster), A Foley (Munster). Replacements: V Costello (Leinster) for Gleeson (61 mins), M Horan (Munster) for Corrigan (65), K Maggs (Bath) for D'Arcy (77), G Easterby (Rotherham) for Stringer, D Humphreys (Ulster) for O'Gara (both 78), F Sheahan (Munster) for Byrne, G Longwell (Ulster) for O'Callaghan (both 79).

ITALY: G Canale (Calvisano); N Mazzucato (Calvisano), C Stoica (Montpellier), M Barbini (Petrarca Padova), D Dallan (Benetton Treviso); R de Marigny (Overmarch Parma), P Griffen (Calvisano); A Lo Cicero (Lazio), F Ongaro (Benetton Treviso), M Castrogiovanni (Calvisano), C Checchinato (Benetton Treviso), M Bortolami (Petrarca Padova), A de Rossi (Calvisano), A Persico (Leeds Tykes), S Palmer (Benetton Treviso). Replacements: C Festuccia (Parma) for Palmer (20-28 mins), S Dellape (Benetton Treviso) for Checchinato, A Masi (Viadana) for Barbini (both 54), Mirco Bergamasco (Stade Francais) for Canale (66), S Perugini (Calvisano) for lo Cicero, S Picone (Benetton Treviso) for Griffen (both 77).

Referee: Kelvin Deaker (New Zealand).