Gordon D'Arcy has been ruled out of the remainder of the RBS Six Nations Championship after breaking his arm against Italy.
Leinster back suffers bad break in Italy win
Gordon D'Arcy has been ruled out of the remainder of the RBS Six Nations Championship after breaking his arm against Italy.
The centre sustained the injury tackling Italy fly-half Andrea Masi in the first-half of his side's unconvincing 16-11 victory at Croke Park.
Ireland coach Eddie O'Sullivan said: "Gordon suffered a stress fracture of his forearm.
"That's the end of his Six Nations and he will have an operation on Monday."
D'Arcy's injury compounded a difficult afternoon for O'Sullivan with his team failing to hit the heights against a rugged Italian outfit in the opening match of this year's RBS Six Nations tournament.
Pleased
However, the Irish coach insisted he was pleased enough with his side's opening win.
"In the context of the Six Nations I'm happy with that performance because it's the first game of the championship," he stated.
"You want to hit the ground running but historically you don't. After the initial shadow boxing of the first 10 or 15 minutes we played some good rugby. We created opportunities but unfortunately didn't finish them.
"We lacked a bit of accuracy and had we taken a couple of those chances it would have made our job easier.
"Italy managed to slow down our ruck ball which killed off our attack.
"It was a performance that turned ugly as it often has in the past against Italy and we had to dig out an ugly win.
"It wasn't the display I wanted because it wasn't polished but it's the first day of the championship and it can happen that way."
Mallett upbeat
For his part, Italy coach Nick Mallett insisted there were plenty of positives for he and his troops to take out of the narrow defeat.
"We were territorially under a lot of pressure. The most positive thing was the attitude of the team and apart from one isolated incident I want to commend Sergio Parisse for the way he captained the side," he said.
"I think that if we are realistic we were quite lacking in the first half. There were two occasions where we could have conceded tries.
"We weren't brilliant but in the second half we did well in that department.
"I'd rather not talk about Ireland. I think they created a little bit more in attacking opportunities than we did and from a territorial point of view they were also on top.
"On the basis of those two they deserved to win but rugby is a very strange game and what is crucial is to stay in touch with 10 to 15 minutes to go."
