The All Blacks coach has been up at all sorts of unusual and unsocial hours watching this year's tournament unfold at GMT plus 12, no doubt sipping coffee and listening to his fridge hum the night away. As for getting back to sleep once the action has concluded? We'd say he's been going out like a light.

If we were to say that this year's championship has been wholly underwhelming in terms of quality, we'd probably be understating things.

The touch of unpredictability the Italians have brought to the table have livened things up a little, as has the whole hoopla about Croke Park, particularly the throbbing night when England were sent scuttling spectacularly backwards. Those moments, however, have merely served to disguise the poverty of the rest of the rugby that's been served up in front of us.

Yesterday at Stadio Flaminio, Ireland's attacking rugby was quite brilliant but it only served to highlight the paucity of their efforts against Wales, Scotland and to an extent, France. This side have become something of a curiosity at this point in their development. In past years those sides in Grand Slam contention, France and England principally, have swept all before them and have failed to notch five wins from five due to one off-key performance. Ireland this campaign, however, have somewhat stumbled from game to game, with the trouncing of an inept England and yesterday's magic in Rome the two efforts that hit the high notes we know this side are capable of.

Besides these two emphatic, high-scoring victories, we've seen a cautious Ireland beat a disjointed Wales, a nervous, slow-starting Ireland lose their nerve against France and a tactically confused and inaccurate Ireland barely scrape past a Scottish side of extreme limitations.

So here we are again, the end of Eddie O'Sullivan's sixth Six Nations campaign as Irish coach, yet still the questions linger about his side's true capabilities, and by extension, the capabilities of the coach himself. O'Sullivan, and many who support his cause out there, must be wondering what he has to do to convince those of us who doubt his aptitude for bringing this Irish side to far higher planes.

The simple fact of the matter, however, is that Grand Slam winning coaches provide no oxygen to fan the flames of dissent. O'Sullivan, on the other hand, both over the past seven weeks and during Ireland's previous three or four Six Nations campaigns, has provided us with more than enough O2 - and not the one on the front of Ireland's shirts - to keep those flames burning brightly.

The questions linger. Why can't this talented and intelligent side put match-tomatch performances together in the Six Nations?

Why can't they put teams they're infinitely better on paper than, like Wales and Scotland, to the sword with greater ease? Why do the players more than occasionally fall short of the high standards they've set for themselves at provincial level when wearing the green shirt of their country?

Looking at this campaign, a couple of things have become clear. For one, O'Sullivan effectively blew the Grand Slam when he inexplicably picked Europe's best number 12, Gordon D'Arcy, at 13 for the game against France. The second point is that the flat backline alignment is still producing too many handling errors, as it did last season and the season before. The system doesn't suit its constituents and the coach needs to tweak it, if not alter it completely, in the coming months. In Rome, the Irish backs played with a depth - of both position and imagination - that they should be replicating on a regular basis. Which brings us to one more point. It would appear this Irish side are still coming to terms with their 'new' way of playing the game, that is, kicking the ball less and holding onto more.

Against Italy they showed how potent they can be when everything clicks but this has to be replicated on a far more regular basis. Remember, back in 2005, O'Sullivan readily admitted he eschewed the opportunity to change the way Ireland played because he felt they could win the Grand Slam? They didn't win it and the revolution only took place at the beginning of 2006. It could just be they won't be fully comfortable with what they're doing by the time of the World Cup . If that proves to be the case, O'Sullivan's gamble would have backfired spectacularly.

We'll have to wait and see.

As for the others, you really have to wonder. France have been their usual enigmatic selves, appearing wholly comfortable with themselves, until they failed to show up against England at Twickenham. They'll need to stamp out that annoying capacity for self-paralysis if they're to wow their home public during the World Cup and by extension, if they're to prove serious challengers to New Zealand.

Scotland, meanwhile, are the type of limited side that are capable of spoiling anyone's day, bar the All Blacks, come the World Cup. The Italians hold similar capabilities to the Scots in the spoiling department, and appear to have found, yesterday's blip aside, their feet at this level of international rugby.

Wales remain in a bit of muddle but if they can get their best 15 players out on the pitch, they have the ability to recapture their Grand Slam 2005 winning form.

As for England, Brian Ashton is either a genius or a joker. You could argue that his selection of England's old guard, and use of old power play tactics, for the opening three games of the championship was solely designed to prove that both the players and the style of play were vastly outdated. That point emphatically proved against Ireland, Ashton was free to bring in his bright young things - Tom Rees, James Haskell, Toby Flood, Shane Geraghty and Tom Palmer - for the games against France and Wales. They're only going to get better as a side between now and the World Cup. We can only hope that Ireland, on the back of yesterday's display, go on to do the same thing.

NEIL FRANCIS'S TEAM OF THE TOURNAMENT 15 1413 12 11 109 12345678 Girvan Dempsey (Ire) Shane Horgan (Ire) Brian O'Driscoll (Ire) Gordon D'Arcy (Ire) Denis Hickie (Ire) Ronan O'Gara (Ire) Pierre Mignoni (Fra) Marco Castrogiovanni (Ita) Raphael Ibanez (Fra) John Hayes (Ire) Paul O'Connell (Ire) Marco Bortolami (Ita) Simon Easterby (Ire) David Wallace (Ire) Denis Leamy (Ire) Girvan Dempsey (Ire) Vincent Clerc (Fra) Brian O'Driscoll Gordon D'Arcy (Ire) David Strettle (Eng) Ronan O'Gara (Ire) Allesandro Troncon (Ita) Marco Castrogiovanni (Ita) Raphael Ibanez (Fra) John Hayes (Ire) Alun Wyn-Jones (Wales) Paul O'Connell (Ire) Simon Taylor (Scotland) David Wallace (Ire) Sergio Parisse (Italy) CIARAN CRONIN'S TEAM OF THE TOURNAMENT 15 14 13 12 11 10 9