Confident O’Leary expects more polished display against France

TOMÁS O’LEARY is pretty sure Ireland’s back division can mend their error-strewn ways and be at their clinical best for the visit of Six Nations champions France on Sunday.

Ireland struggled against Italy in their championship opener on Saturday, a performance marked by several handling errors that left Declan Kidney’s side needing a late Ronan O’Gara drop goal to secure a 13-11 win at Stadio Flaminio. Scrum-half O’Leary believes those problems can easily be put right and will need to be with counter-attacking experts France coming to the Aviva.

O’Leary said: “The French are renowned for their flair and their attacking play and they’ll be a different proposition than the Italians. It’s a challenge that we’re looking forward to. We created the opportunities and we did get into good shape where we had the opportunities, especially out wide, but we just weren’t clinical enough.

“We can create those opportunities again and I feel, given the quality of the boys out wide that we’ll take those chances next week.”

O’Leary spoke of the “relief at the end” that came with the narrow victory over the Azzurri but added: “I felt we were comfortable for most of the game. We created a lot of opportunities but didn’t take them. That gave the Italians a lot of encouragement and in the last 10 minutes then, they sniffed the win.

“The boys worked a great drop goal, showed great composure.”

The Munster scrum-half called replacement O’Gara’s winning drop goal as “pure Rog” but bemoaned the performance that saw Ireland requiring another great escape from the veteran fly-half.

“It did show great composure but it shouldn’t have got to that stage.

“We weren’t clinical enough out wide. I thought the pack were very good and the backs let them down but at least we created those opportunities and hopefully we’ll take them next week.”

Before the Irish players get to kick-off time on Sunday against the French, O’Leary predicted plenty of payback from the Ireland management after such a sloppy performance in Rome. “Certainly, the coaches will give us a bit of a kick up the arse,” he said.

“The Italians are always hard to break down but the fact that we spilled a lot of ball and missed our scoring chances gave them extra encouragement and once they had that then they had the incentive and they got a try at the end. Thankfully we eked it out in the end.”

O’Leary was positive about the manner in which Ireland had not allowed Luke McLean’s 75th minute try for Italy, which gave the home side an 11-10 lead to get the better of them. “It was pretty quiet (in the dressing room after the game) but we were all satisfied that we did show good character to get a win.

” We could have put the heads down and lost there but everyone’s happy with the character and the resolve we showed. We’re not happy with our skill level, we were kind of sloppy so that’s obviously what we need to work on for next week. But I’m confident we can improve that and have a better success rate in scoring tries.”