Because of the wind, the headlines will just scream O'Sullivan must go as opposed to O'Sullivan must die . . . horribly.

Ireland were saved from the worst ever start to a championship by Mr Dave Pearson, the referee at Lansdowne Road yesterday afternoon. Mr Pearson erroneously awarded two tries to Ireland, 14 points. Do the maths on the scoreline.

Italy won yesterday's test game. I'm sure that Mr Pearson will be involved at international level in the future but I just hope that the popcorn he will be selling will leave a better taste in the mouth than his performance yesterday. He had a shocker.

This was his first test match and his inexperience was horribly shown up from the very first minute of the game when he got in the way of Paul Griffen's pass, not once, but twice.

As an Irishman, I'm not complaining too much but for the purposes of equity and fairness, you knew that when the Italians came out after the final whistle and applauded their very vocal fans that they had been robbed. Meanwhile, Eddie lives to fight another day.

I had a small inkling after the autumn tests that the team had lost its way a little bit, even the traditional structure which is heavily imbued in O'Sullivan's tactical game plan was missing. But they seemed to lose him as well.

And that cleft in O'Sullivan's personality has come back to haunt him a little bit. The distinction between a manager and the leader is as broad as the distance between control and inspiration. Eddie needed more than control in his team.

Let's try and take this match in isolation, because if this is the start of a trend Ireland are in serious trouble.

You can never be certain that Ireland won't come out and put up a huge performance against the French in Paris;

most people would say it's unlikely but you never know.

Some people might say that this is exactly the type of performance Ireland needed to get themselves mentally right for the French game, because the way things stand at the moment, Ireland are in for a thrashing next Saturday.

I'm not quite sure. Eddie will make his excuses. I didn't get my hands on a set of stats but from my own notes, Ireland seemed to pass more than they kicked, so maybe there was a change of emphasis that has been signalled by media and squad alike, maybe not. From my perspective, change is inevitable except from vending machines and Eddie O'Sullivan.

The game they tried to play yesterday just didn't suit, particularly given the quality of the opposition they faced.

The Italians were unsurprisingly good in every department yesterday. It's a thankless task to win matches you're expected to win and I would say that as I am writing this report, the Irish pack are sitting deep in the dressing room nursing their bruises. Ask them about the Italian pack, it's like asking a lamp post what he thinks about the neighbourhood dog.

The Irish pack were once again eclipsed by the Italians.

The most disturbing aspect being their complete inability to generate any kind of momentum or static ball won at line-out time. The Irish eight couldn't even drive Miss Daisy and only in moments of real need did they manage to generate some go-forward and this was symptomatic of their mental approach.

Ireland are normally pretty comfortable trying to dictate the pace of the game without the ball and I would guess that the Italians had them for possession and field position and yet Ireland, for most of this game, just didn't fire offensively or defensively. It was also disquieting to notice how easily the Italians made large holes in Ireland's first-up offering, Cristian Stoica, both Bergamascos and the outstanding player on the park Sergio Parisse always gainlined with efficiency and a minimum amount of hassle from their defensive opposites.

Ramiro Pez, a player transformed from his earlier incarnation, and Paul Griffen, a body mix of Bob Marley and JPR Williams, controlled things very effectively and didn't suffer in comparison to their more vaunted counterparts.

Let's get down to the actual winning of this game. How did Ireland win this game?

And it's a very simple matter really, and to my mind it just came down to the feet and inches of clearing their lines.

When Ireland found themselves penned in defensively . . . and they spent a good part of the afternoon in that situation . . . they were able to stir themselves sufficiently to work their lines clear in a far more effective way than the Italians. If Ireland won their line-out, they managed for once to get their maul going and get six or seven yards on the front foot. And O'Gara was given time to put length into his kick. a Alternatively, from scrums, Leamy would pick and go, the ball would come reasonably quickly and O'Driscoll was used off his right foot and his auxiliary kicking made a huge difference. Italy normally had to peg back to the halfway line and Ireland were out of danger. Sometimes they used Horgan, even on their own line, and he would have the confidence to burst a couple of tackles and retain possession and again O'Driscoll or O'Gara could clear without any threat. The Italians, for their part, when they found themselves deep in their own territory never managed to clear effectively, and when Ireland managed to gain control of the ball again they made it pay.

One of the advantages that Italy had was that their new coach, the great Berbizier, was under no pressure and you could see what a fantastic job he'd done with this Italian side. This side is as good as the one of 10 years ago where you had Diego Dominguez in his full pomp.

Yesterday, they got into the game very quickly and showed some wonderful dexterity, executing some wonderful chest-high offloads as they went through eight phases. They also had done their homework in the video room on Ireland.

When they went wide, they had enough decoy runners darting up the middle of the field and by the time the ball got to the outside centre, there was plenty of space and they were quite content to chip through if need be which they did on occasion. They also were very clever defensively. They rushed the midfield and gave O'Driscoll and D'Arcy nothing all day. Only when Mr Pearson penalised them did they relent in this department.

O'Sullivan won't make any changes but he seriously needs to think through how his team are going to perform against the French.

Once again, the fickleness of international rugby comes home to roost and the Leinster and Munster games are but a memory.