Best game plan is to stick to the basics

It was possibly stretching things a bit for the Irish coach to term a defeat by the Scots as a disaster. But it probably wouldn't be if Ireland lost at home to Italy today. Knowing Warren Gatland, he'll again be putting himself under pressure to produce an Irish win, and you'd like to think the players will be as well.

Half-empty Lansdowne Roads for one-off non-championship matches are not the most auspicious of backdrops for big Irish performances. One only has to think back to the flawed World Cup qualifier against Romania this season, or the Bologna defeat last season, or the home losses to Western Samoa and Italy the year before, and other examples. Irish sides tend not to have the innate professionalism for occasions such as these.

There's no doubt that this Irish team is at a low ebb, and needs a restorative win and performance to sign off the season prior to the summer trip to Oz. However, the Italians are possibly at an even lower ebb.

Admittedly, the 60-21 defeat at home to Wales last time out was a bit freakish - the result bearing little relevance to the game and especially the first half. On a line through the Scots, there wouldn't be much between today's protagonists.

As with Ireland, the Italians are on a mission, not only to rediscover that winning touch. "This is a black moment, an emergency situation," admitted their Frenchborn coach Georges Coste. "In Italy, when you say you are in a bad moment, you grit your teeth and roll up your sleeves. We have to rediscover certain values and qualities we had which we lost in the last month."

The Azzurri have been bedevilled by an inordinate crop of injuries to their thin pool of players. As if to prove the point, an Italian journalist wrote out a team and replacements of injured Test players.

This has obliged Coste to promote a debutant at outside centre in Giancomo Preo, as well as giving a first cap as a flanker to the reputedly dynamic Stefano Saviozzi, who has been reincarnated in this position after winning his first couple of caps as a hooker.

All told there are five changes from the team beaten by Wales, with a number of familiar names missing such as Cristian Stoica, Paolo Vaccari, the Dallan brothers, Andrea Sgorlon and Massimo Cuttitta.

Indeed, so crippling has their injury list been that only the halves, Alessandro Troncon and Diego Dominguez, along with their flanker and captain Massimo Giovanelli, survive from Bologna last year, when Italy recorded their third straight successive win over Ireland.

Ireland, then, have a score to settle, or three scores to be accurate. And the best of way doing that would probably be with a few early scores. This is not the most skilful Irish side ever to take the pitch. Run through the pack, especially, and it is not over-endowed with technical flashy types at all. But that may be as well for the needs of the day.

To begin with at any rate, and probably for a long time into the game, nothing too flashy will be called for. What will be required will be solid set-pieces and defence supplying the foundations for a simple enough, more patterned game plan, setting targets up the middle through Rob Henderson and the like, exploring the blind side and putting the ball in behind the Italians. Make them turn, and as the old Jack Charlton maxim went at this ground, put 'em unda presha. Given the Italians' low ebb, there is the possibility that they will crack, or start to concede penalties.

Alternatively, if they are given the fillip of a try or two to take the lead, then the confidence could come flooding back to them. They're bound to be a decent side, especially if given the chance. Dominguez yesterday departed to Lansdowne Road for kicking practice, and made sure that the several Gilbert match balls would be waiting for him. Legend has it that the knows the weight and pressure of every make of rugby ball. He and the Azzurri have been something of a bugbear to Irish sides and coaches in the 90s.

Hence, aside from exercising their new-found discipline this season, Ireland will surely need to cut out the turnovers and so reduce the risk of them by not playing too wide a game - which would undoubtedly suit the Italians.

They do not have a particularly tall pack and as Coste admitted yesterday, could struggle for orthodox line-out ball unless they come up with plenty of shortened variations on their own throw.

Recalling their closely-fought World Cup qualifier with England in Huddersfield last November, the Italians are therefore even more likely to avoid kicking to touch except when utterly necessary, and will probably seek to keep the ball in the hand and off the ground through a mauling game and lots of target runners off the shoulders of the diminutive Dominguez.

There are also a few disconcerting straws in the wind. The weather is set fair and this is more the Italians' time of the year. Sod's law also decreed that whereas a Welsh referee blew the Italians out of it in Murrayfield, and a Scottish referee did more of the same to them against Wales, now they have a potentially more sympathetic French referee.

Even so, when all's said and done, this is a game Ireland should win if they stick to the basics, keep it simple and keep the errors to a minimum. The degree of prettiness this comes with is both secondary and relative.

IRELAND: C O'Shea (London Irish); J Bishop (London Irish), K Maggs (Bath), R Henderson (Wasps), G Dempsey (Terenure College); E Elwood (Galwegians), C Scally (UCD); J Fitzpatrick (Dungannon), R Nesdale (Newcastle), P Clohessy (Young Munster), P Johns (Saracens, capt), J Davidson (Castres), T Brennan (St Mary's College), V Costello (St Mary's College), D O'Cuinneagain (Sale). Replacements: J Bell (Dungannon), B O'Driscoll (UCD), C McGuinness (St Mary's College), K Wood (Harlequins), P Wallace (Saracens), D Corkery (Cork Con), A Ward (Ballynahinch).

ITALY: J Pertile (Roma); F Roselli (Roma), G Preo (Lofa Mirano), L Martin (Begles-Bordeaux), M Baroni (Padova); D Dominguez (Stade Francais), A Troncon (Benetton Treviso); G De Carli (Roma), A Moscardi (Benetton Treviso) F Properzi (Benetton Treviso), V Cristofelleto (Benetton Treviso), M Giacheri (West Hartlepool), M Giovanelli (Narbonne, capt), O Arancio (Benetton Treviso), S Saviozzi (Benetton Treviso). Replacements: R Rampazzo (Padova), G Menapache (Padova), S Stocco (Padova), W Viser (Benetton Treviso), G Mazzi (Roma), M Piovene (Padova), L Zoin (Fiamme Oro).