Somehow it didn't quite feel real, did it? In the aftermath of Sunday's record win over Wales there was delight, definitely, at the manner of Ireland's performance. Yet, there was also genuine amazement that the visitors assuredly constituted the worst Welsh side to ever play at Lansdowne Road.

Disappointment, too, that as a match it wasn't much of a contest. As much as the boys in faded green, that was the talk of D4.

Irish supporters like a bit of a contest, indeed they're not used to winning without one. This was almost too easy to be true. Was it really Wales? The atmosphere during the game and the general mood afterwards was more in keeping with a win over the likes of Romania or Japan.

Another problem was the Sunday kick-off at the behest of terrestrial television, whose desire for live coverage of all three games on Six Nations' weekends supersedes the paying customer. Nothing new there. But when will the Six Nations powerbrokers understand that the Six Nations is as much a social event as a rugby match, and you tamper with it at your peril? Apparently there was talk of the Welsh returning tickets in advance of the game, and if their team continues in its current vein that's liable to become a habit, while there were swathes of empty seats in Stade de France too. The Welsh supporters, especially, are mostly blue collar and though the Six Nations committee men mightn't be aware of the fact, they have the minor inconvenience of work on a Monday morning.

Likewise, the other travelling supporters, such as those who had to commute back to the four corners of Ireland on Sunday evening. Hence the night was a relatively damp squib. Sunday games go against the very essence of the Six Nations, and the wider interests of the tournament might be better served by playing all games on Saturdays, with terrestrial television confining itself to highlights of their third-choice offering.

That only one other Sunday game crops up in this championship is because England have three home games, all of which are televised exclusively by Sky Sports on account of the deal which the English RFU blithely concluded, thereby arrogantly denying terrestrial viewers from their own country and abroad access to games at Twickenham.

As a result, those Twickenham games are not available to the BBC and RTÉ, who are left with the other two games on those Saturdays. It is also a reflection of the way Twickenham puts pounds ahead of selling the game to a broader public that the other games on Saturday week - Wales v France and Italy v Scotland - will comfortably draw a bigger audience than Sky for England's game with Ireland on the same day.

Much more of this tampering, especially congesting the Six Nations even further, and you can't help but feel that the old championship will continue to lose some of its lustre. As it was, the opening weekend traded more on reputation than substance, for it has to be said the series didn't compare favourably with a European Cup weekend in terms of competitive rugby.

The Heineken Cup consistently throws up more passionate contests than any of the three weekend Six Nations games. None of them truly stirred the soul, and only the Irish and the English can feel satisfied.

Not that the opening series of results will necessarily prove an accurate formguide for the rest of the tournament. Form can fluctuate wildly in this competition, run as it is over five series and two and a half months, and while France's win over Italy was laboured, they are notoriously slow starters.

Unlike the Welsh, at least the Italians didn't roll over and have their bellies tickled, rather they kept on tackling until they dropped, even when reduced to 13 men after two of their four sin-binnings overlapped.

Alan Lewis' haul of five yellow cards brought to mind his haul of six in a Lansdowne-St Mary's AIL game a few seasons back which prompted Trevor Brennan to remark: "It's not a sin-bin Lewey needs, it's a skip."

It was remarkable how the RTÉ and BBC pundits differed to such an extent in their assessment of Lewis' performance. Jonathan Davies thought Lewis "had a very good game", whereas George Hook, in a hilariously outrageous comment even by his standards, reckoned Lewis "had done more damage to the Italians than Mussolini did".

It is undoubtedly true that the Azzurri lost their heads in trademark fashion, but they were hard done by in the decisive 10-minute spell before half-time when Carlo Checchinato was yellow carded for being one of three Italians aiming swipes at Olivier Magne. Replays clearly showed Magne stamping on the left side of the face of a prostrate Italian left-winger Denis Dallan, so in the heat of the moment it's hard not to feel some sympathy for Checchinato. What team-mate wouldn't react? When Italian captain Alessandro Moscardi approached Lewis about the incident, the referee interrupted him by saying: "I don't care."

In mitigation of Lewis, the stamping happened on his blind side, so he couldn't possibly have seen it, and his touch judge Steve Lander missed it. Hence Magne avoided the red card he deserved. One wonders what form of defence the French will use after Magne was cited yesterday.

At the time the score was 12-3 to Italy, and not alone was Checchinato binned, but Gerard Merceron kicked the resulting penalty while in the 10 minutes the Italian lock was off the pitch, the French scored 16 unanswered points to utterly turn the game on its head.

Compounding Italy's sense of injustice, France's try during this crucial spell by Damien Traille followed a blatant earlier knock-on by David Auradou which Lewis also missed.

While the Scots did put it up to England, thanks to Jason Robinson in the main the game was over from early on. As one writer noted, Robinson found God in his darkest days, but before then God had created Robinson. At least when he was a winger you had a nominal notion of where Robinson was coming from. The twinkle-toed league convert is proving even more lethal from his roving full-back role and already he looks like being the player of the championship.

Ireland defensive coach Mike Ford, who had a good first day at the office, will earn his corn in the next two weeks just devising plans to cope with Billy Whizz.