After the Italian Job, Ireland will find it hard to power past powerful France

Ireland's Six Nations squad just about edged past the Italians last weekend, but will they be able improve enough to beat the powerful French side?

By Conor Ward

Never in doubt really was it – The Italian Job! Ireland made such hard of their task last weekend that it made anything pulled off in the movie (both movies in fact, when you include the 2003 remake, a very underrated piece of work) look like pretty simple stuff by comparison, the proverbial piece of cake.

So inept was the handling at various stages that one might have reckoned that the ball was carrying some deadly virus and therefore should be thrown away with the utmost of urgency.

With the Italians buoyed by our failure to capitalise on some glaring opportunities, we almost conspired to lose the game, only for the trusty boot of the Roginator to save the day.

But the late heroics aside (to be fair, the entire team played their part in setting up that score), it was a performance far below what this team is aiming for and nowhere near the level required to compete in the tournament over the course of the next few weeks.

It is ultimately two points on the board, so there’s probably not too much point in continuing to pore over it, but like some lad from Kerry who got off at the wrong subway stop on his first visit to New York, Kidney and his troops must know they are not in a good place with the French coming to town this Sunday.

Cobwebs

Will the performance improve? I would say definitely. It simply has to. Quite a few cobwebs will have been cleared off (that reminds me of all that dusting I have to do around the house), the areas to work on will have been swiftly identified and mistakes will surely be greatly reduced – simple passing and catching for starters.

The problem is, against a team as good as the French, will the inevitable improvement from last week be enough? With just one change in personnel – Jamie Heaslip reclaiming the No 8 spot after recovering from injury – the onus is on the same players to get their act together in the space of just eight days.

Looking at the two teams on paper offers about as much comfort as falling asleep drunk on a small two-seater couch.

The victory at Croke Park two years ago after a truly enthralling game teed us up for Grand Slam glory, but that result should not lull anyone here into any false sense of security. Hard reality is that we need to be at our very best to think about getting results against those boys.

Looking at the two teams on paper offers about as much comfort as falling asleep drunk on a small two-seater couch. While their pack is not enormous, it’s a dependable unit well proven at the top level and gave an assured performance last week against a Scottish eight, which is no pushover.