Few complaints after Italian job

Veni, vidi, vici. Three games, three wins, 22 tries, 172 points scored and 12,000 Irish supporters savouring an historic Roman Holiday in possibly the most beautiful city on the planet. Great junket and a good first weekend in the championship too. There may be malcontents back home but there were few out here.

No harm in hindsight, perhaps, that Ireland had this one first-up. A better team than the Italians, or even the Italians with Diego Dominguez, would assuredly have punished Ireland's looseness in the opening period. Ireland won handsomely in the end, but no harm in hindsight either that they didn't record a third 60-pointer in Italy over the weekend, for some tempered Irish optimism before the French come calling may be no bad thing.

Cowbwebs were dusted off and for sure there'll be a tighter, more focused performance against the French. There'll be a restful week for the majority of the players and none of the 13 home-based players will play for their clubs next weekend. The Munstermen, especially, need a break. With Brian O'Driscoll and perhaps Denis Hickie also back on board, there'll be plenty for them to work on when they come together in a week's time.

The rucking for one, the scrum for another, even the line-outs have been slicker, not to mention the missed first-up tackles and the flawed decision-making by the ball-carrier. To pass or not to pass; it befuddled them continuously in that unnerving first period.

"I have to say I thought some of us didn't play too well," admitted Keith Wood. "I hold my own hand up - in the first-half I was pretty poor. I thought a few of our guys didn't bring ourselves up to the standard we could have done. And I think in the second-half we upped our level considerably."

That Ireland are in classical, one-game-at-a-time mode was also made clear by Wood. "France is going to be a serious match, I haven't really put any thought into it. Actually if you asked me two weeks ago I wouldn't have known. But this was a nervous match. It's a horrible feeling because everybody expects you to win and if you don't win you're the greatest losers ever and if you do win, nobody's going to get terribly excited.

"I think they'll have had a great weekend in Rome. It was quite Irish. The Fields of Athenry at the start was a little bit funny. I'm going to have to tell the championship new guys that this doesn't happen every time we play away from home."

Wood also revealed that during the interval "we got the proverbial bollocking and deserved it. After that we just maybe committed a few more people to rucks and started playing into the areas of the pitch we needed to be playing. And once we did that we found ourselves in a more enviable position.

"There was one try, Shane Horgan's into the corner, that was a brilliant try. We had that ball for 10/15 phases. I'm looking up seeing that going on and thinking `we've held onto the ball and done so well in the last 60 seconds, this deserves a score'. But we threw away the ball too much in the first-half."

Compared to other winning post-match dressing-rooms, this one was tired but happy, if not ecstatic. "I thought Italy were quite cynical and in the nature of that they mightn't win too many matches, but they'll stop people playing. And it's very annoying. But if that is the manner people are going to play against us in future we need to have ways of counteracting that."

There were still quite a few garlands to be thrown around, David Wallace leading from the front when the going was toughest with some trademark dynamic ball carries. What odds the brothers Wallace providing a third Lion? And of course there was Rob Henderson, the buffalo on stampede yet again and maybe silencing those critics who label him a one-trick pony.

It was not, Wood maintained, a question of him filling Brian O'Driscoll's boots. "Rob has been on fire all season, and all last season. It's not a question of him stepping up because he's oft overlooked and I'm happy he played well. But I also have to say Girvan had a good game; I thought Wally had a good game, Quinny did a lot of good work, and I thought Mick Galwey was one of the few guys who did play well in the first-half.

"I was happy for Tyrone Howe in his first championship game, I was happy for Emmet Byrne when he came on. We've blooded a few more new guys today. There's so many things we have to tidy up in our game we can't be happy with certain things, but at the end of it you have to take it as a Six Nations win. I don't give a damn who it's against or where it is."

It's said that if you throw a coin into the Trevi Fountain and make a wish, you'll come back. So there were about 12,000 extra coins in the Fontana di Trevi then. Ciao Roma.