D’Arcy: Character kept us going

A CASE of character rather than performance. That’s how star Irish centre Gordon D’Arcy viewed things: “It was far from an ideal performance, we wanted to replicate the way we played against France and England and we couldn’t do it.”

So where does that leave Ireland heading for what now promises to be a seriously demanding test against Italy in Rome on Saturday?

Again, D’Arcy was forthright: “we need to improve by 15% but it’s not a case of going back to the drawing board. You must remember that’s a really, really tough Scottish team to break down. Italy got three freak tries against them and England caught them cold at Twickenham but Wales struggled because the Scots have a very good defence. We couldn’t get into the game because they weren’t letting us.”