EASY PREY PICKED APART BY IRELAND
Italians are brushed aside but it feels like amissedopportunity
A STROLL down Lansdowne Road isn’t what it used to be with the Berkeley Court hotel, once home to so much IRFU Test day frippery, now cordoned off and in the process of being prepared for demolition.
What played out inside the stadium, though, was a more aesthetic destruction. Energetic Ireland lived up to their insistence that this 2016 campaign bore no similarities to 2013, when they last struggled for spring results.
That was a wretched campaign which left them tailed off in fifth, their worst finish since 1998.
Yesterday’s stroll – the result was sown up by the four first-half tries that put them an insurmountable 22 points clear at the break – drew a line under their winless February. Hope now exists that a respectable top-half finish can be secured if upand-coming Scotland are picked off in Dublin in six days’ time.
Ireland’s troubles last month were obvious in some tournament-low statistics, just 35 points in 240 minutes, two tries in three games and only a 77.4 per cent success rate at the usually reliable lineout.
However, those issues were all ironed out here. There were 58 points, nine tries and a 100 per cent return on their throw.
It was an all-round improvement that was too much for a hapless Italian outfit to cope with, especially as their own tournament-low statistic – having the poorest tackle success rate – carried on unchecked.
Eleven tackles were missed during an opening half in which Ireland’s rediscovered pack grunt and ingenuity out wide left the visitors wilting.
A 36th minute scrum five metres from the Irish line epitomised just how comfortable an exercise this was.
Instead of kicking to touch immediately, as they would in a higher pressurised contest, the ball was put through the hands, initially with Robbie Henshaw breaking, and only from a ruck near the edge of the 22 did Conor Murray clear to touch at the 10-metre line.
That play encapsulated their lack of fear on the sort of untroubled afternoon that you should nearly always expect against porous opposition, whose consistent underperformance year after year does nothing for the organiser’s lofty claim that this is rugby’s greatest championship.
The Azzurri were in dire need of their anticipated new coach for next season, Conor O’Shea, giving an organisational dig-out instead of talking about their abject downfall inside a television studio.
So awful were they that the disappointment from an Irish perspective was how this genuinely was a missed opportunity to try something fresher personnel-wise and give out starts to those who haven’t normally had them in the Six Nations.
A win by, say, 10 or 20 points in a harder fought contest using a selection with a few more inexperienced starters could have been an invaluable, more welcome nod to the longterm future than the questionable value of a largely pyrrhic victory.
What had done for Italy was an opening half-hour implosion where they lost three lineouts (both starting second rows had disappeared injured to the stands) and made other cheap errors that left them vulnerable to Ireland’s high-tempo approach amid balmy, fast-track conditions.
They even snubbed an early sniff at causing the hosts some trouble, Gonzalo Garcia not having the dexterity to elude Conor Murray near the try line.
He instead found himself bundled into touch and the game was soon up for the Italians.
Their self-inflicted wound was Leonardo Sarto palming the ball over the head of his full-back David Odiete after a bouncing Jonathan Sexton kick. This mistake allowed Jared Payne gather and set the ruck that led to two passes left for Andrew Trimble to get in at the corner.
It really was as simple as that all afternoon.
That comedic moment from Sarto set the trend for what was to generally follow. There were passages of Sexton trickery and Irish ambition, moving the ball quickly either through the hands or with kicks that forced the Italian defence to turn and scramble.
The second try, though, was more agricultural than enterprise, a lineout maul not going very far before meaty carries from Devin Toner and CJ Stander led to a third from Jack McGrath who forced his way over.
Cue momentary Italian respite, hands in the ruck from Jamie Heaslip enabling Edoardo Padovani post some penalty points, but that was an aberration in a half where the flow of action was mostly in the other direction.
The impressive Sexton punished Sergio Parisse’s late hit on him with a penalty, before the industrious Stander barged over for his first try for his adopted country after a well- disguised inside pass from Sexton to Earls caused panic.
This momentum culminated in events in the half’s closing minute, a 22-metre drop out being gathered and Sexton inviting Simon Zebo in on his act, the full-back off-loading sweetly on halfway before the ball travelled through a multiple of hands and Heaslip got in to leave it 25-3 at the break.
The result was already settled, but tries from the maligned Payne, who picked off an intercept, Heaslip and Cronin made it 46-3 with 25 minutes still to go. Even more were to follow.
The lively Ian Madigan showed great feet to get their eighth, either side of Italian consolations from Odiete and Sarto, and the last say was Fergus McFadden’s, the replacement who made the most of a string of cameos after coming on for three different players.