Injuries and G-spin nearly have us in a tailspin

Considering the rude good health of Irish players in recent months it was hardly surprising that fate dealt a nasty hand yesterday. The prognosis has Gordon D'Arcy almost certain to miss Saturday's game in Murrayfield with man-of-the-match Brian O'Driscoll in a race against time.

"Both have the same injury," explained Eddie O'Sullivan. "Both picked up hamstrings - Gordon when he was running at full flight in support. Brian, when he was in a ruck, got hit from behind and when in the extended position. It's happened to him before. Gordon will be under terrible pressure for next weekend, Brian I don't know yet but it doesn't look great.

"You can't bargain for these things, they just happened, they are part and parcel of the game and it was a hell of a tough game."

So the potentially earth-shattering injury problems aside, it wasn't a bad return from a weekend when the big three all struggled, while Scotland and Wales proved they will have a substantial say on where the championship finally ends up.

The Italians? Well, they are quite simply infuriating to play against in Rome but they also exploited a creaking Irish scrum and ensured the Irish class outside got precious little ball to move. Yet, the three most incisive attacks produced three tries.

A five-yard scrum late in the second-half particularly saw Italy's strength versus Ireland's fallibility in this department - if not for Anthony Foley's experience possession would have been coughed up.

However, O'Sullivan refused to dwell on the negative aspects of the afternoon - he will save that for a behind-closed-doors session back in the Citywest bunker - but he did pay tribute to the Azzurri performance.

"It's a good Italian side and anyone who comes here is going to have their hands full. I think on the road they are also going to be tough. I'm happy with the victory but at the end of the day I'm worried about the injuries.

"We stuck to our task in the second-half and wore them down. We said before the game it might take 10 minutes before the end before this game would be won and that's how it turned out."

The lightning quick reflexes of Peter Stringer on 44 minutes finally put a chink of daylight between the sides. "Straight off the training pitch, yeah. No, Shane (Horgan) did well to keep it in play and I was lucky to be on hand to run in, it was pretty easy in the end. All credit to the Italians. We knew it was going to be tough coming to Rome. I think they showed a lot of spirit today."

O'Sullivan pointed out that scores came from first-half scraps. "We struggled in the first half because we hadn't the football. I think we had our first attack in the Italian half after 22 minutes. We had a good return: we had three first-half possessions in their half and we scored twice. We struggled with the ball and couldn't put accuracy or length in it. It certainly hurt us in the first half when we needed to be able to kick our way out of trouble."

Being one of the finest exponents of pinning teams back, Ronan O'Gara's radar was out but having only a week to switch from the almost universally used Gilbert to the Mitre G-spin certainly hindered this process. Others also struggled with the heavier ball, including, crucially, Italian outhalf Luciano Orquera who kicked one from four before handing the tee to full back Roland de Marigny.

"It's an unusual ball," O'Sullivan observed. "We had a similar problem in New Zealand a couple of years ago, with what they call the lemon, but it seems to me a company can produce any ball they want and once a union is prepared to use it, you've got to use it. There's nothing we can do about it but it strikes me as strange considering the stakes are so high."