Caelan Doris says Ireland sloppiness was due to forcing issue in title pursuit

Captain Caelan Doris conceded Ireland were guilty of “forcing things” in an attempt to put pressure on their Guinness Six Nations title rivals during an unconvincing 22-17 victory against Italy.

Simon Easterby’s side temporarily moved top of the championship table thanks to a stuttering bonus-point success in Rome before England’s dominant 68-14 victory against Wales ended their pursuit of a third consecutive championship crown.

Ireland, whose Grand Slam dream was crushed by last weekend’s 42-27 Dublin drubbing at home to France, required a resounding win at a sold-out Stadio Olimpico to remain in realistic contention for the ultimate prize.

Backed by an estimated 30,000 travelling fans, the back-to-back champions produced an underwhelming display and could easily have suffered a shock defeat to an Azzurri team hindered by injury and indiscipline.

“It was very much the result first but there was probably a little bit of feeling that when momentum was coming with us, given how the first 20-30 minutes went, we wanted to convert when we got the chances,” said Doris.

“And maybe there was a little bit of forcing things out there.

“There were quite a number of last passes that didn’t go to hand or little plus passes at the line that didn’t go to hand – quite a few examples of that.

“Why? Yeah, maybe forcing things a little bit. I’m not sure.”

Hugo Keenan’s score cancelled out an early opener from Azzurri wing Monty Ioane before a hat-trick from hooker Dan Sheehan turned the contest in the visitors’ favour.

However, fly-half Jack Crowley, who started ahead of Sam Prendergast, squandered three of his four conversion attempts to leave the game in the balance.

Stephen Varney’s try, supplemented by seven points from Tommaso Allan, increased the tension before Ireland hung on on an afternoon when retiring centurions Peter O’Mahony and Conor Murray made farewell cameos from the bench.

Prop Cian Healy – Ireland’s most-capped player, with 137 outings – also waved goodbye, albeit he has not in the matchday squad.

With last week’s humiliation on home soil against Les Bleus the sole blot on Ireland’s copybook, Doris hopes the tournament acts as a “springboard” moving forward into a new era.

“There has been a lot of good stuff; I think winning the Triple Crown in our first three games showed quite a lot of positive things,” he said.

“There are obviously lots of things we can learn and grow from over the last couple of weeks and I hope that it will be a springboard for us as a group to go on and continue to evolve and a bit of a realisation that there’s still a lot of work to be done and a lot in us.

“But overall four wins from five, lots of positives in there, definitely.”

Italy lost three forwards and starting scrum-half Martin Page-Relo to injury, while Michele Lamaro spent time in the sin bin, Ross Vintcent was shown a 20-minute red card and Giacomo Nicotera received a late yellow.

Interim head coach Easterby echoed his captain’s assessment.

“Sometimes you try too hard to make those passes stick or make one more pass at the line but credit to Italy, they put us under pressure as well,” said Easterby.

“We probably didn’t deal with that pressure as well as we could have done, so we got the five points that we needed but it wasn’t the sort of scoreline that we anticipated.

“Part of that is down to a little bit of inaccuracy and probably trying too hard to force things that went wrong.”