The loser in Cardiff will likely face defending champion New Zealand in the quarterfinals.
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“But sometimes you got to win ugly and maybe we were lulled into a false sense of security by our two previous games”.
“Individually and collectively he will galvanise them, he’s a world-class player and we’ve seen him over the last few years what a good player he is and the threats he brings”. “Italy had a win-at-all-costs attitude and that made it tough for us”. No. 8 Jamie Heaslip speared off, Sexton’s inside pass hit Robbie Henshaw in a gap, and center partner Keith Earls was there for the offload on the line.
“He’s a hard man to stop and I know it better than most”, said Sexton of Bastareaud. I really am happy that we have got there. You can’t do it. If you don’t use your arms – both of them – when going in to clean someone out then you are liable for sanction.
Thankfully for Ireland it wasn’t as they commendably held their nerve when O’Mahony was sin-binned and missed a tense final nine minutes.
The contest restarted where it had left off, with Ireland on top, but in the 49th minute, it was Italy who went closest as only a sensational covering tackle from Peter O’Mahony prevented Simone Favaro from diving inside the corner.
Irish skipper Paul O’Connell echoed the relief of his back-to-back Six Nations-winning coach, conceding: “It was probably a timely reminder for everybody that there is a lot of quality in this competition”.
Add to that his high-quality off the kicking tee and you have a style of play that’s rarely going to win over the neutrals, but is capable of troubling the very best teams in the world.
This was, after all, a much more meaningful encounter since, for all that Ireland were expected to beat Italy, it could not be the foregone conclusion that the meeting with Romania had been seven days earlier, not least with Sergio Parisse having recovered sufficiently from injury to be able to offer his inspirational lead to his men, which he duly did as they attempted to keep their own hopes of getting through alive.
“We didn’t play with the same intensity that we needed and that intensity was thrown back at us by an Italian team that were inspired today”.
“When you make mistakes it flattens the performance you can’t get into any rhythm”. I think the first clean line out we got Johnny made a half break and got into the 22 and we got three points from that.
Italy were delighted with the improved performance but frustrated they could not claim a standout win.
“Unfortunately after that we were a bit behind in the score”.
Sexton gave them a little breathing space with a penalty as the game neared the hour mark for a 13-9 lead.
Italy coach Jacques Brunel, who steps down after the tournament, said the team had shown their true worth.
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“When we’ve performed well and won big games, we’ve been very good at denying teams access by our good set piece, by our discipline, by our accuracy and we need to do that again this weekend”.
