O'Driscoll relieved with narrow win

Brian O'Driscoll voiced his relief after Ireland narrowly avoided a first RBS 6 Nations defeat by Italy.

Only a drop goal by substitute fly-half Ronan O'Gara with two minutes remaining prevented the 1/8 favourites from enduring a humiliating loss in Rome as Ireland won 13-11. O'Driscoll stated on Friday that he felt it inevitable Italy would win the fixture one day and admitted tonight they had gone extremely close.

"The game's not over until it's over and as long as you still have the ability with four minutes to go and create something, you're still in the game," O'Driscoll said. "When I said that about Italy winning eventually, it's the same as the likes of ourselves saying that one day we'll beat the All Blacks because we haven't done that yet. I'm sure the law of averages say that when teams play that often they'll eventually beat one another."

He added: "It was very close and we were fortunate to a degree to be able to come out of it.

"When you're four minutes down of course you think there's every chance you'll lose the game."

O'Driscoll crossed in the 44th minute but Ireland paid the price for butchering a raft of chances with the captain himself, Keith Earls and Gordon D'Arcy guilty of making mistakes.

"We created a huge number of opportunities, it's just we lacked the clinical edge and that was the frustrating thing," said O'Driscoll.

Italy coach Nick Mallett insisted his side lacked the nous to complete one of the great upsets on the tournament's history.

"The team still has to learn how to control the ball in attack. We need to be more patient," Mallett said.

"In the last two minutes of a game we are leading we can't miss a kick-off and give the ball straight back to the opposition. These are small areas of experience that we will learn. We learn a lot from this defeat."