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.