Get to ground: Ireland's Tomás O'Leary crosses for a try against Italy in the opening Six Nations clash of the season at Croke Park yesterday

As far as I was concerned there were two ways to deal with the Italians yesterday at Croke Park. Send out the Stukas and dive bomb them, send in the Panzers shortly afterwards and shortly behind those the elite infantry corps to mop up anything that was left alive – it's called blitzkrieg and it is the best way to deal with obstinate and non-compliant opposition.

The second course of action was to take out a shovel, dig a two-metre ditch a hundred metres long, dig in, occasionally take out your bolt-action mauzer and take a couple of pot shots, sometimes go over the top, around the side, through the middle and whichever way you think yourself to win a battle of wills. Ireland did neither and probably took the least effective options from both gameplans and ended up getting nowhere.

It's a perfect preamble for the French game. The game over at half-time with the score at 23-8 and the Italians would never be able to muster six penalties to overtake their hosts. The bench was emptied early and what amounted to nearly a wolfhounds pack kept the Italians at bay and kept enough of the ball to cause the odd bit of excitement. But there was no conviction and Ireland never chased a larger margin of victory purely because they could not have been arsed and it seemed that the instructions from the sideline were to tread water, run the clock out and keep themselves fresh for Paris.

The third quarter of this match was some of the most turgid I have seen under Declan Kidney's stewardship. I recently had a colonoscopy which I was able to watch on the television monitor that was more entertaining than the 20 minutes we had to endure at the commencement of the second half.

Ireland lost their shape and they got caught up with trying to play a game which just was not on. The Italians are pretty confident off set plays and their three-quarter line is very solid defensively. Where you do damage against them is after you go three or four phases, then they lose their shape, but Ireland began to run static ball and got caught behind on the back foot. The Italian back-row of Zanni, Bergamasco and Sole managed to do some serious damage on the ground and in the tackle to give Ireland the slow motion ball.

Against good sides or bad sides hot ball is the key. Ireland were getting same-day delivery in a nano-second world. The Azzuri are season ticket holders on the line of least resistance and they spent the day offside in midfield and referee Romaine Poite was quite happy to let them do so when particularly in the second half they deserved at least two yellow cards for professionally and wilfully destroying good attacking opportunities from blatantly offside positions.

Poite yet again had a very uneven performance although he didn't behave like an untipped waiter as he did in the Munster game versus Northampton, but I did pay hard currency for a ref link and some of his decisions maybe got lost in translation, either way they were baffling. In the 57th minute he told Cian Healy after a reset scrum that you have improved your bending but you are not straight, this is after the Irish scrum had been shunted three or four metres, how could he expect a front-row forward to be straight in that situation? Minutes later he declared to nobody in particular "are you going to dispute all my calls" – just the crap ones Romaine – effectively every second call.

Ireland played with a reasonable degree of quality and their first try should have been a scent of what we were to expect throughout the game. Ireland once again had done their homework on the Italians and instead of attacking a well-stocked open side they chose narrow blind sides, sometimes you can over play the tactic and run out of space and time.

In the 14th minute O'Gara chose to attack the blind side, the flatness, speed and surety of the pass to Trimble right on the touchline, even surprised Trimble. Trimble got away as the pass beat the cover but he stepped McLean too many times and slipped but he managed to crawl and offload once in behind. After Darcy's looping exploration he found O'Driscoll and good hands to Wallace meant all Heaslip had to do was run on to the inviting pass and score.

Ireland were doing many things well and some of the players who were afforded opportunity took advantage. The Italians were roasted at line-out time. Leo Cullen picked off four steals, O'Connell got one and Heaslip also nicked a couple. It was a significant swing in terms of how the match progressed once Italy's tight game was gone they couldn't rumble and recycle but Ireland's tactical kicking and the box kick were overdone and they kicked away an awful lot of the hard, stolen line-out ball.

After threatening to cut Italy to pieces five minutes from half-time, Ireland struck with Cullen picking up an overthrow from a short line-out with O'Leary getting over the line on the second bounce. Ireland lost themselves and their gameplan and from their performance thereafter you would have needed a Saint Bernard to find it again.

It is still a major concern how little ball O'Driscoll gets in to his hands. He was the only guy on the field who could throw a seven with one dice and yet he is limited to embarrassing cameos, mainly kicking ones to stem the mediocrity of what is going on around him. Trimble played well. Kearney had one of those very mixed games where his absolute talent can rescue him. Unfortunately for Kevin McLaughlin in a game which was well short of the sort of pace that you would expect in a Six Nations game just did not feature. Could you imagine the amount of damage that Alan Quinlan could have done on the field. If it was horses for courses this was Quinlan's game and he should have been selected. If Ferris is fit he will most definitely start in Paris.

A perfect match to take to Paris. Ireland never combusted but they should have everybody back on board with no illusions about themselves but no self-doubt either. The quality is still there, bubbling under, and they are still the best team in this competition. A lot of course depends on what happens today in Murrayfield but I would suspect both sides will pitch up unbeaten next weekend in Paris.

nfrancis@tribune.ie