YOU COULDN’T MOVE in Rome this morning without your eye catching an Ireland jersey.

The travelling support have been arriving in waves ahead of tomorrow’s Six Nations meeting with Italy and while a big contingent of Irish support had been anticipated, the latest numbers have surprised both camps. The Italian rugby federation are now expecting up to 30,000 Irish fans at the Stadio Olimpico, which is a 72,698 sell-out.

Ireland go into the game knowing the destination of the Six Nations trophy is out of their hands following last weekend’s loss to France. Fabien Galthié’s men top the table on 16 points, two clear of third-placed Ireland, ahead of their home clash with Scotland tomorrow night. England are second on 15 points and visit Wales in tomorrow’s second game.

All Ireland can do is look after their own job and that’s the focus within the group. The chance to put on a show for those travelling supporters had added to the motivation, while the retirements of Peter O’Mahony, Conor Murray and Cian Healy has again been spoken about by the team.

“Given the three lads finishing up, obviously last week was very disappointing and it changes the nature of the end of it, but for us it’s still about finishing with our best performance, the rest is out of our control,” said Ireland captain Caelan Doris.

Doris spoke to the media in Rome today. Ben Brady / INPHO Ben Brady / INPHO / INPHO

“But the three lads, what they’ve contributed, the group we have, we really want to finish with our best performance yet and that’s been a key theme through the week. Obviously there was quite a bit of disappointment for 24, 48 hours post-game and it can be tricky seeing some of the clips back and the images and the frustration around that.

“But we turned the page quite quickly and getting excited about a special weekend over here with our best performance yet in front of, I believe there are 25,000 or 30,000 Irish travelling over, which will be incredibly special.”

While Ireland losing a home game to France is far from a shock result, the manner of the defeat certainly reverberated around the rugby world. Doris accepts Ireland were not at their best in Dublin last weekend and while the disappointment lingered into this week, the group have tried to channel that feeling toward producing a better display.

“I am confident we can do it, I think it’s been a good week, I think we’ve addressed some of the wrongs from last weekend, some of our conversion in their 22, some of our contacts, sort of middle 25 minutes of the second half, hoping to see good fixes from that tomorrow.

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“It was obviously a big defeat that takes away our Grand Slam hopes. With any big defeat you want to learn and want to have it as a growth ultimately in the long-term, I hope we can take lessons into this weekend but also in the long-term that we’re not where we want to be consistently at all yet and there is still so much growth that we we really need to chase that down. So I hope that it’s going to add to the group long-term.”