RUGBY/World Cup countdown: It wasn't quite the Spanish Inquisition, in tone or in seeking to elicit reasons behind Ireland's lacklustre performance in victory over Italy at Ravenhill last Friday night. The Irish squad were given the weekend off and it was only yesterday afternoon that they reacquainted themselves with the training paddock.

The squad hadn't yet been officially debriefed on the Belfast match so the thoughts of Alan Quinlan, Gavin Duffy and Isaac Boss on that particular night's display were of a personal nature. The fact none of them started the game meant they won't find the video session too uncomfortable.

The general tenor of the players' observations was philosophical, recognising the fact it was a substandard effort but unwilling to mire themselves in recrimination or despair.

Quinlan expressed the pragmatic overview: "The mood in the camp is good, everyone is pretty positive.

"I think after Friday night everyone was a bit disappointed with the performance. I know there was a bit of criticism over the performance and rightly so but we are all around long enough as players to realise that you have to put it in context. We know we were lucky to get the result in the end. Everyone was disappointed with the performance and there is no hiding that; players, coaches everyone.

"We just have to work hard this week and try and put that right, find out why we didn't play well on Friday night as a team. I don't think we need to change much. To be honest, I think we have trained very well and have steadily improved."

Quinlan was adamant the players viewed the Italian match as an opportunity to confirm the confidence garnered from quality training sessions: "We are starting to gel more and people are looking sharper in the rugby sessions. There was a big emphasis on fitness and weights over the summer. It took a while to get back into the rugby side of things.

"We were all hopeful that Friday night was going to be a much better performance but are around long enough not to get carried away. We deserve to get criticism for the performance maybe but as a group we are not panicking.

"We have been together as a group for nearly the entire summer and are content with the way things are going. We are happy with the way that we want to play but not the way we played on Friday night."

Quinlan was forthright in trying to contextualise Ireland's problems against Italy's doughty performance on the night: "Italy are definitely improving. They came to Ravenhill the other night and were pumped up and very physical. They have a lot of pride in their jersey.

"But we should beat Italy every day of the week, realistically - that's with respect to those guys. We should win and should probably play a lot better than we did. I'm not trying to hide that fact.

"Sometimes when you play against a team if you look at the first 20 minutes we were one or two passes away from scoring two or three tries. If that had happened it could have been a totally different game. Italy hung in there and forced a lot of mistakes."

The Munster and Ireland flanker acknowledged the Italian coach Pierre Berbizier had targeted certain facets of the game and one of those was to put pressure on the Irish halfbacks by strongly contesting ruck ball. It was a successful gambit.

"Maybe we forced it a bit much in trying to run the ball and we could possibly have gone back to basics a bit and kicked towards the corner," said Quinlan. "It's a test match before a World Cup and fellas wanted to throw the ball around a bit. We will learn from it."

That in essence is what Ireland must do and quickly. There's no doubt that the home team rarely strayed from the basics in an effort to keep most of their attacking gambits under wraps but it was their failure in executing the central tenets of the sport that will demand great attention to detail over the coming weeks.