No hangover but Easterby downbeat at Ireland performance in Rome
Ireland interim head coach Simon Easterby and Caelan Doris of Ireland after the Guinness Six Nations Rugby Championship match between Italy and Ireland at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome, Italy. Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
Ireland boss Simon Easterby was left disappointed by his team’s performance as they closed out the Guinness Six Nations campaign with a 22-17 victory over an ill-disciplined Italy at Stadio Olimpico on Saturday.
A week on from a sobering 42-27 defeat at home to France, the interim head coach had spoken of his hope for Ireland to deliver their best performance of the championship. They needed a bonus-point win over the Azzurri to stay in with a chance of retaining their title and completing a historic first Six Nations three titles in a row, although they were relying on upset wins from Wales at home to England and Scotland in Paris against the French.
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They did reap the maximum return from their fixture to make it four wins from five in this season’s competition, with a Dan Sheehan hat-trick scored between the 39th and 57th minutes adding to Hugo Keenan’s early try. Yet in front of up to 30,000 Irish supporters they failed to properly capitalise on Italy’s two yellow cards and a 20-minute red card and that left the boss with mixed emotions at full time.
“It’s five points that we needed, initially, but a little bit disappointed that we didn’t quite play at our best today,” Easterby said. “I think credit to Italy. They had a part to play in that. But certainly we probably coughed up too much possession. We didn’t quite make the most of some of the opportunities that we had.
“First half we scored two tries and they came off the back of some really good work in the maul and I think in a game like that, I think had we got a bit further ahead of them, we could have broken the back of them a little bit but we allowed them to stay in the game and I think the score-line reflected that. It was tighter than it should have been given the amount of possession we had in the second half.”
Italy had struck first with a Monty Ioane try on 11 minutes as Ireland’s defence was cut open in midfield, while the home side also secured a losing bonus point with a second-half try from Stephen Varney. A much-changed Ireland, meanwhile, failed to hit their straps for long periods, despite the promptings of recalled fly-half Jack Crowley and instead of a rebound from the previous week’s Grand Slam-ending loss on home soil, it was put to Easterby that there appeared to something of a hangover instead.
“No, not really,” he countered. “We felt like the week had gone well. We turned the page, we ironed out some of the things we didn’t do so well in the French game. It felt like we’d turned a page.
“Sometimes you try too hard to make those passes stick or make one more pass at the line but credit to Italy. They put us under pressure as well. We probably didn’t deal with that pressure as well as we could have done, so we got the five points that we needed but it wasn’t the sort of score-line that we anticipated but part of that it down to a little bit of inaccuracy and probably trying too hard to force things that went wrong.”
Captain Caelan Doris conceded his team had possibly been a little guilty of forcing things but asked to reflect on Ireland’s championship campaign as a whole, he said: “I think there has been a lot of good stuff.
“I think winning the Triple Crown in our first three games showed quite a lot of positive things.
“There are obviously lots of things we can learn and grow from over the last couple of weeks, and I hope that it will be a springboard for us as a group to go on and continue to evolve and a bit of a realisation that there’s still a lot of work to be done and a lot in us. But overall four wins from five, lots of positives in there, definitely.”
