Ireland started their 2008 Six Nations campaign with a scrappy win over Italy. Eddie O’Sullivan, the Irish coach, can not be happy with his side’s poor performance. The Irish lacked confidence and failed to put the resiliant Italians away, despite dominating possession and territory advantage.

New Italian coach, Nick Mallet, can take great heart from his team’s performance. Their set piece play was solid and they defended like trojans. Italy will rue the two missed goal kicks by fullback David Bortolussi, if both the kicks were slotted Italy could have drawn the game.

Ireland relied heavily on the boot of Ronan O’Gara to keep them going forward and the flyhalf kicked well out of hand and contributed 11 points with the boot to guide his team to a 16-11 victory. The Irish will have to improve a lot if they want to dominate in this year’s Six Nations competition.