Improving France won’t like our tight game-plan

Joe Schmidt’s Ireland have become so consistent and efficient in terms of performing and, most importantly, getting results, it could be compared to a Japanese-built car.

Saturday’s win in Rome was Ireland’s eighth consecutive win and all those victories — apart from Georgia in November — were against teams ranked in the top tier of IRB (or World Rugby as they like to be called now) nations.

The game in Rome wasn’t much of a spectacle, indeed it was boring at times, but that will not matter one iota to the Irish management. They went there with a game-plan built around starving the Azzurri of possession and killing off any of their energy and the influence of the crowd which often drives the Italians to perform at higher levels that normal.

Ireland won the Six Nations last year on points difference and our hammering of Italy in the Aviva played a large part in helping us outlast England. Playing Italy away from home and first up this time was obviously a disadvantage — statistically, Italy have only been beaten by eight points in the opening round, compared to an average of 15 points in latter rounds — so to come away with a +23 points difference is excellent.

There is a saying in rugby that you have to earn the right to go around teams. In the opening hour, Ireland set about earning that right through building phases and trying to play the game in the right areas of the pitch — namely the Italy half. Ireland varied their kicking game well through Murray’s box-kicking and Keatley and Kearney kicking for territory.

When Irish pressure forced penalties, Paul O’Connell wisely took the option to kick for goal and Keatley was impressive from the tee and finished with a 100% success rate.

A big part of Ireland’s attacking arsenal under Schmidt has been our ability to really hurt teams off set-piece attack. We tried a couple early in the game but our timing was just a little off and that will be something they will rectify this week at training. One example was the phase of play that led to Ian Keatley giving a forward pass to Tommy O’Donnell — the move was correct and there was a space created through the use of dummy lines and blockers, but Tommy was just half a second too early and the opportunity was lost.

That’s understandable on the first weekend and also obviously Tommy only found out he was playing when Sean O’Brien twinged his hamstring in the warm up. Of the six countries, five were a little rusty over the opening weekend with only England looking primed to play.

Ireland played a lot of one-out rugby on Saturday with little deception on the line. By that I mean forwards frequently took the ball into contact after just one pass from Conor Murray, hence there was rarely the option of a little pop pass to another player either inside or outside to search for, or to create little holes in the opposition defence. Also we didn’t use the little pass out behind to a back which would have allowed us to attack a little wider. This lack of deception allowed the Italians to rush off the line and make dominant tackles and slow down our ruck speed.

When we played off slow ball, the Italians were able to get back on their feet quickly and the field seems claustrophobic at times as we struggled to find space. However this team is as honest as the day is long and they rolled up their sleeves and built phase after phase which led to the Italians tiring. By the time Tommy O’Donnell burst through for a second-half try, it was noticeable their capacity to get off the line quickly and also their ability to “hit and stick” in the tackle was starting to diminish. It was noticeable in the last 20, how much more time and space Ireland had but the reality was we had earned that through hard work and smart play.

Additional positives were the improvement in our scrum which was solid, our lineout — in particular our defensive lineout, which caused the Italians a lot of problems.

Defensively we looked very comfortable but I expect the French to ask us more demanding questions in defence as the Italians and their back line in particular are very one-paced. Tommy O’Donnell and Ian Keatley have shown that they will step in and perform if needed and as we close in on a World Cup building strength in depth is crucial.

I expect Sexton and Heaslip to come back in to the starting team this week and they will be crucial in our efforts to beat the French. I was in Paris for their win over Scotland and while they are far from the finished article they looked more organised and better coached than they have in recent years. Camile Lopez at ten has given them direction and in terms or individual ability, their backline has more talent than any other in the competition. They were far more aggressive on opposition ruck ball than usual, and as Ireland like to play a phase-game with a lot of rucks due to a lack of off-loads, we will need to be very efficient at the clean out and make sure our support player is very close to the ball-carrier at the tackle point.

France don’t like playing against teams like us who keep things tight and I think that Schmidt will find that 10% improvement individually and collectively to get us the win.