Monday, February 08, 2010
IT WAS not a day most of the Irish team will look back on with much satisfaction.
To be fair, people like man of the match David Wallace, try scorers Jamie Heaslip and Tomás O’Leary and the entire front row will remember the occasion when most of the others will have long forgotten it.
It’s wasn’t that Gordon D’Arcy let the side down, rather he was just one of the many who failed to get into his stride and found the game passing him by.
Next Saturday in the Stade de France will be a very different situation, although the Wexford man had an interesting take on that when the subject was raised on Saturday night.
"The great thing is that you guys set the expectation and we’ll leave that to the bars and people talking about it in the stand," he said. "We just want to win the game, that’s a strength of this team. Expectation is something that’s created by other people.
"We have our own goals and our own standards. We probably lived up to 60% or 70% today but that’s for us to figure out. We’ll sit down on Monday and go through it.
"We can focus on a lot of positives, our scrum worked very well, they gave away a lot of penalties, and our lineout was fantastic. Maybe our slow ball can be improved a little bit, be a bit more disciplined in their 22. We’re not frustrated although I think we were definitely capable of scoring five, six or seven tries but Italy were coming out of the line and that kind of defence can stop a lot of tries.
"My own thought is there’s 20 or 30% per cent to improve, the lads know it and I think everyone watching the game knows it. That is something that will be stinging a little in the back of our minds until we start training on Monday."
The provincial coaches and even some of the top players were unhappy when forced to miss out on a few Magners League matches over Christmas because of IRFU stipulations. D’Arcy sees it differently.
"You can’t but benefit from being fresh in games," he maintained. "I think the IRFU and the provinces are absolutely fantastic about monitoring their players and their workload, the amount of time on the pitch and on the training pitch. That has definitely shown in the last year and a half with the provinces and Ireland. When we got to game four and five last year, we showed we were definitely fresher coming into them more than other teams. That can only benefit us."
© Examiner Publications (Cork) Limited, City Quarter, Lapps Quay, Cork. Registered in Ireland: 73385.
