Ireland's Craig Casey delighted to get some game time with his club partner Jack Crowley

IRELAND scrum half Craig Casey was delighted to team up with regular Munster half back partner Jack Crowley in Ireland’s facile 36-0 Six Nations victory over Italy at the Aviva Stadium on Sunday afternoon, with him assisting his outhalf for the game’s opening try, although he did feel that there was still some room for improvement from the tournament favourites.

"I'm very happy to assist Jack. He has had a very good start to the campaign. Any chance I get to start for Ireland, but especially with him. 

"He's my roommate this week as well, so it's been good.

"The goal was to get better and show a better performance on the field, I don't know if we fully did that. 

"There was definitely areas we were happy with, but it's tough to say right now how good we were. 

"We'll look at it during the week and analyse it.” 

On his own performance, Casey seemed satisfied with his display on what was his 14th cap for Ireland.

"I don't think it was perfect, by any means, but I was happy with the composure I showed to bounce back from mistakes. 

"That's one thing I have tried to pride myself on this week. I knew everything wasn't going to be perfect. 

"Italy are a good team and international rugby is different. I'm happy with how I responded to mistakes. Hopefully I showed my hand in some from. I want to keep putting my hand up."

Ireland head coach Andy Farrell was obviously a pleased man in the aftermath of what was an extremely comfortable victory.

"We're happy enough and we got what we wanted in the game with a bonus-point win. Keeping them to zero is very pleasing and there was some nice tries out there and some nice performances by individuals.

"We got a bit clunky in parts but they are not easy to play against. They have changed the way that they play. 

"They are a little more pragmatic, so you have to find different ways of getting the ball back.

"I thought we were trying to be too tidy at times, just playing with shape when we broke them down with a bit of individual brilliance. 

"We need to back ourselves a little bit more as far as that is concerned."

When asked to comment about man of the match James Lowe the head coach was glowing in his praise, while also highlighting the impact that the Irish set piece had on the fixture.

"He played really well, didn't he? He looked very strong. I think our scrum was man of the match, to be fair. It was a lovely weapon and we backed up our line-out performance from last week as well.

"It's good they are up and running. We keep the competition where it should be, but the competition only gets going from here on in."

James Lowe, who could have been man of the match last week in Marseilles, commented.

"It's nice to be back home and we're pleased with the result, but obviously there are a few things we need to work on. We're looking forward to a week off and then a couple of hard days of training.

"Our set piece was phenomenal again. It's easy when there are platforms like that. 

"We probably put ourselves under pressure with mistakes and compounding errors, and that's not ok so going forward, it's what we have to work on as we can't give teams that easy access."