Italians frustrate Irish patterns

It says something for Ireland's current standards that they can string together three below-par performances and win two of them. Even so, this was a poor display in a poor game, and repeated against a Grand Slam-seeking France in a fortnight would end a sequence of four genuinely competitive games between the countries.

Of course, the likelihood is that a fear factor will induce an altogether better effort, for that component was lacking here.

Even the crowd had an undistinguished game. As flat as a pancake come kick-off, often outchanted by the knot of Italians in the upper West Stand, they were roused only by Salvatore Perugini's sin-binning for his headbutt on Peter Stringer, and they ultimately resorted to whistling and booing Diego Dominguez's place-kicks: an unwelcome break with Lansdowne Road tradition.

Brad Johnstone, in his rather one-eyed view that Ireland set out to provoke his players, seems to have contracted an Italian persecution complex. Perugini had no grounds for doing what he did, and the Italians will have to do some soul searching over a yellow card tally of nine in four games.

That short fuse is hurting them, too, and aside from galvanising home fans and players alike, both of John Kelly's tries came when the Azzurri were down to 14 men.

That cop-out yellow card apart, the Italians were given a rough time by Rob Dickson, and Ireland were also helped along by questionable calls for their first two penalties.

For the first, quite why the Italians would pull down their scrum outside their 22 straight in front of the posts is debatable, and, for the second, a scrum would surely have been the most they deserved against them when their centres, Giovani Raineri and Cristian Stoica, accidentally brushed against each other.

Furthermore, if Giampiero de Carli was deemed worthy of a yellow card for taking a swipe at Peter Clohessy, then Alessandro Moscardi was entitled to ask why the Claw didn't receive similar punishment for taking a swipe at Mauro Bergamasco.

The Italians had been virtually whistled off the pitch by the referee in Friday's A game, and that sort of rough justice they receive against the more established nations is an embarrassment to the game.

In a flat Irish performance, it's no co-incidence that three of the best performances came from players making full championship debuts, Kelly, Gary Longwell and Shane Byrne, who perhaps felt they had the most to prove. Kelly had the kind of debut dreams are made of, and deserved his two tries.

"On a scale of one to 10, that definitely rates as an 11," he admitted. "Scoring tries on your debut for your country is something you dream of as a kid, but I never actually dreamed of this."

His first was the product of Ronan O'Gara's pick-up and quick, flat, skip-pass. The second came through Longwell and David Humphreys keeping the ball alive before Clohessy delivered a deft, fingertip reverse pass inside.

It was a nice coup de grace for the old warhorse making his last Lansdowne appearance. Egged on mercilessly by O'Gara on the sidelines, Clohessy's farewell salute brought the house down.

The best was kept until last. Humphreys kicked a penalty to touch and, when the lineout maul was held up, they reverted to a rehearsed and well-executed set move as plan B. The captain's loop with Shane Horgan, and some crisp handling by Kelly and Girvan Dempsey, set Denis Hickie up for his 13th international try (nudging alongside Brian O'Driscoll in that footrace to beat Brendan Mullin's mark of 17) and showed what this back-line is capable of.

The game suited Anthony Foley, who tackled big when the Italians' sniffed a second-half comeback. Ireland kept toiling when they had to, and Simon Easterby, John Hayes, Stringer and O'Driscoll all worked hard, and there were no really bad performances. But collectively they looked in need of a lift.

It has to be said that O'Gara's cameo gave the team a fillip. Attacking the gain line and moving the ball through his hands that bit more quickly than Humphreys, he gave Ireland's running game more width and penetration.

Overall though, Ireland lacked the penetration of even the flawed 41-22 win in Rome last year, never mind the 60-13 win here two seasons ago, and a three-tries-to-two tally at home to a side against whom even poor, pitiful Wales ran up five tries three Saturdays previously certainly isn't worth shouting about.

This was clearly a frustrating afternoon for Ireland, as they generally struggled to get their patterns going. The talk afterwards from the Irish camp focused largely on Italy's effectiveness in spoiling and slowing down ruck ball, but none of this was surprising. Nor was the intensely physical contest provided by the Azzurri's pack. Drawing on a domestic analogy, it was, said one of Ireland's Munster contingent, akin to playing Connacht.

More unexpected was the Italians' unrelenting and dogged persistence over 80 minutes, which yielded a try in the 92nd minute of actual playing time. Bearing all that in mind, the Irish camp were grateful enough for a win, and relatively uncritical of their performance.

On more mature reflection, though, or, more pertinently, on closer inspection when they analyse the game at their midweek get-together, they will be more self-critical. The scrum was wheeled too easily, once even by a seven-man pack.

Byrne could be reasonably pleased with 17 darts out of 20 yielding a return, but while this marked a discernible improvement of recent efforts, overall the set-pieces must remain a source of mild angst for the management.

While there were clear signs that whenever Ireland took the game through phases and applied some width they could do damage, somehow there hasn't been the same tempo to Ireland's game these past three outings. Recalling another exceptional demonstration on Friday night by Keith Gleeson of openside link play when going forward and competing at the breakdown, this was another nudge in the ribs that Ireland don't have a true openside at the moment for the game they are trying to play.

For the most part the Celts didn't ask Ireland any of the defensive questions which England did through high-tempo, quick recycling and attacking out wide, and nor did the Italians.

Nonetheless, Giampero de Carli's try at the end from third phase off a tap penalty was finished off too easily with a four on two overlap.

That score particularly was unnervingly reminiscent of Twickenham, especially with the forthcoming trips to France and New Zealand in mind.