“LIMITED?”
CONOR MURRAY didn’t so much snap at the question about Ireland’s gameplan, but asking for the clarification served to bat it stone dead.
It’s familiar territory for an Irish team after a trip to Rome. Barring the 2013 defeat, the post-mortem is usually the same: ‘it wasn’t perfect but we got the win’.
It’s not just Ireland either. A quick scan of Italy’s opening day bursts into the Six Nations Championship shows exactly why it’s the worst time to face the Azzurri. Last year, they lost by five points in Cardiff, in 2013 they took the scalp of France and two years before that Ronan O’Gara came off the bench to salvage an 11- 13 victory with a 78th minute drop-goal.
Plenty leave with a win, but nobody tends to leave Italy very happy. Points on the board, move on to the big game — the first of two home fixtures that will likely make or break this Championship defence.
With France first and foremost on his mind, Murray used Les Bleus to illustrate just how unlimited Ireland can be when they manage to click.
“Every game you go into it’s a different gameplan depending on the opposition you’re playing against. Last year against France we were in a couple of good areas and one of our tries was off a really good counter attack which is the opposite of being non-ambitious.
“So we’ve a lot of strings to our bow and we’ll think about a good gameplan to attack this game.”
This Ireland group are comfortable in their skin and comfortable holding the mantle of title contenders. If the Six Nations is a competition of momentum, then Joe Schmidt could point to the added impetus his team will gain from the addition of Jonathan Sexton, Jamie Heaslip and Cian Healy next weekend. Even if Sean O’Brien doesn’t manage to return seven days after his minor hamstring strain, reloading with such an arsenal would be enough to improve any team.
The personnel are not the area of focus for Murray and his teammates though. While he is not willing to accept that Ireland play a limited style, he’ll be happy to admit the improvements are required everywhere after a day in which the back-line struggled to find gaps and too often dropped possession just as the screw was beginning to turn.
“We probably didn’t play as well as we could have. We’ve highlighted a few areas we can fix quite easily. Areas we’re usually good at that weren’t so good at the weekend that we can fix going into this weekend.”
An imperfect win over Italy will never be satisfying, but it won’t make Ireland any more concerned than usual about the threat of France. Certainly not with Philippe Saint Andre’s men finding themselves in a near identical position after a laboured and imperfect home win over Scotland.
Whoever leaves Lansdowne Road victorious on Saturday evening will be able to point at the opening game as a useful building block, a warm-up rather than a worrying symptom of problems up ahead.
“It’s after one game,” Murray said as he assessed the form of Ireland and France.
There’s a few little areas where we were a small bit rusty on that we have to get right. We’ve been in camp for a number of weeks and over Christmas so we’re probably a bit frustrated the way things turned out in the end.
“But we won – not ugly – but we managed to get the job done. France are probably the same. I imagine they’re in camp this week with the exact same mindset, trying to fix a few areas and turn out a really good performance which is what’s in our heads.”
Whether you win ugly or pretty, play a limited or expansive game; these things only seem to matter against lesser sides.
Against France, any sort of win is cause for celebration.
