IRELAND GOT THEIR Six Nations campaign up and running in Rome this afternoon with a hammering of Italy.

CJ Stander grabbed a treble of tries — as did Craig Gilroy — in a 63-10 demolition of Conor O’Shea’s side.

The win — a week after defeat in Edinburgh — puts Joe Schmidt’s side on six points and leading the table for a couple of hours.

“We were disappointed from last week, we didn’t start the game right way,” Stander told RTE afterwards..

“We just came out and said we have to work hard for each other.  It’s easy if everyone brings their part.

“We were sluggish last week, we didn’t come out the first half and play the game the way we wanted to. I think this week we played the game how we wanted to. In fairness to our backline and to Paddy, he controlled the game and our forwards kept on scrumming well and that made a big difference this week.”

In the first year of the bonus point system in the competition, the nine tries scored by Ireland at the Stadio Olimpico may well prove decisive.

“It’s something we didn’t mention during the week but it was probably something in the back of our minds, it’s going to be tough for us from now on in the competition so we need to take every point that we can,” the Munster man said after picking up his man-of-the-match award.

“And in fairness to Jamie and the leaders they said we needed that last try and we got it on 82 minutes and it just shows we can play longer than 80 minutes.”

A 90-metre breakaway try was the highlight of Munster’s win last night