ONE OF the clouds looming over Saturday’s Six Nations opener is the presence of French referee Romain Poite. The man who incurred the wrath of Munster and Leinster alike in presideing over home defeats to the All Blacks and London Irish, and then sin binned Paul O’Connell last Friday week at Thomond Park in Munster’s arm-wrestle with Northampton, will oversee his first Six Nations game at Croke Park.

Monsieur Poite has at times a decidedly French, laissez-faire attitude to the breakdown, and very specific ideas on the scrum, but if nothing else, he will leave few people in any doubt as to who’s the boss. And O’Connell knows that better than anyone.

Asked yesterday if he was surprised by Poite’s reluctance to have dialogue with him, the Munster captain and Irish vice-captain accepted that he may have engaged the French official in conversation too much.

“Ah, a little bit (surprised), but I probably needed to react to that then and stay away from him. I suppose he’s a new referee – I mean, he’s a referee I hadn’t played a match under before – and you get used to different referees and how they do things. That was a learning curve for me in terms of how Romain handles things.”

Whether their recent experiences will have benefited the Irish players remains to be seen.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily how you play him, it’s just that certain referees do things certain ways and you certainly don’t want to be annoying them. You want to let them do their job.

“I think he’s a very good referee, you just want to let him do his job. If he doesn’t like being asked things or to clarify things now and again, well, that’s the way it has to be.”

In the corresponding game last year in Rome, a week after conceding only two direct penalties at home to France, Ireland were whistled off the Stadio Flaminio pitch by Chris White and fell 6-0 and 9-7 down, with only an intercept try by Tommy Bowe to show for their unsure efforts.

“It could have got worse too,” admitted Alan Gaffney, the Ireland backs coach. “Ronan got binned and things could have been a lot worse, but the boys dug deep and got themselves out of a hole.

“You’d love to give no penalties away in a game but it’s not going to happen.

“We’ve got to be disciplined in our approach and give Italy as few chances as possible.”