Very rarely in Ireland’s Six Nations history has there been a bad time to play Italy. Their experiences in Rome in 2011 and 2013 went from uncomfortable to bizarre, but otherwise this fixture has been largely about banking points.
When Italy come to Dublin the hosts’ record is unblemished. Meeting on a mild and dry afternoon a week after Ireland had been struggling to score tries, the home team were not long about filling their boots.
It was not without cost, for Ireland or Leinster – where Leo Cullen will be less sanguine about the Champions Cup quarter-final – with Tadhg Furlong tearing a hamstring and then, in the second half, Robbie Henshaw damaging a shoulder in the act of scoring his second try.
Ireland 56-19 Italy: Six Nations – as it happened
You feel for teams sometimes when they are under the pump and their opponents refuse to cooperate. Penalty five metres out? Scrum please. Another penalty? We’ll scrum again thanks. Penalty again? Right, we’ll nudge this to the corner and take you on there.
This was Italy’s experience midway through the second quarter. Already they were 21-0 behind and would have paid the campers to shift their green tent to another field. Instead they were put through the wringer.
By half-time Ireland’s target of a bonus point had been hit. Their dominance did not waver after the break either, despite edging the try count only 4-3 in the second period.
There was not much Italy could take from the game – at least not anything they had not already filed away. They know how to play the game but do not have the players to do it near well enough. Certainly not against this quality of opposition.
Sergio Parisse embodies their plight: at his peak he was one of the very best No 8s in the world. He is now well over the brow of that hill, but in a setup with no depth he has to continue. Frequently he looks unhappy on the field – on Saturday especially.
His team had to make 155 tackles to Ireland’s 88 and in that scenario it figured that their penalty count – 11 – would be nearly four times Ireland’s.
“We didn’t have the ball in the first half,” Conor O’Shea said. “We couldn’t create pressure, we couldn’t get a foothold. Every breaking ball seemed to go into an Irish hand, which is down to their great play. This is top-level sport, without the ball it’s difficult.”
No matter who you are playing, conceding three penalties in 80 minutes is very good and much of what Ireland did here fell in that category. Conor Murray was the man of the match but the head coach, Joe Schmidt, would have been best pleased with the performance of Andrew Porter.
You would imagine it is a while since the young tight-head, earning his fourth cap, played more than 75 minutes of rugby, but from the moment he came on for Furlong he made a positive impression. The first scrum went down on his side – thereafter he drew no attention from the referee, Romain Poite, in a performance that featured 13 carries, a stat any prop would be delighted with.
So the disruption after Furlong was minimal. The set-piece was strong and Murray and Johnny Sexton at half-back were first class, as was Keith Earls whose chase back to prevent a try in the dying minutes summed up his attitude. Five of the backs touched down – making most of all the ball they were getting – and there were eight tries in all for Ireland.
They had got to 42-0 by 53 minutes before Italy got off the mark, with the best of their lot going to Tommy Allan.
“We know what level we have to get to,” O’Shea said. “We knew this would be the hardest of hard days.”