Italy give France early headache

Many a coach down the years has declared that he would rather be lucky than good and it is a mantra which Bernard Laporte may have been repeating to himself on Saturday night.

If the Frenchman's good fortune extends to captain Olivier Magne escaping further punishment for a clear stamp on Italian wing Denis Dallan, he might consider the opening game of this Six Nations campaign something of a charmed fixture.

An ugly 33-12 victory over dogged Italy can be considered a fairly good return from an unimpressive performance by France, who began the day eager to jump a month ahead for 'Le Crunch' with England.

On this evidence, the only thing to worry Clive Woodward is the notion that the French will - in predictably unpredictable fashion - follow up a lacklustre showing by blitzing Wales on route to rediscovering the form which destroyed Australia and South Africa in the autumn. Laporte is fond of saying that 'only victory is pretty' but even he was forced to make excuses for the fractious, error-strewn 80-odd minutes of bumbling and lawbreaking which passed for entertainment at the Stade de France, saying: 'I'm sorry it wasn't a good advertisement for the game. I apologise to the spectators.' Perhaps he should have apologised to Dallan, not to mention Carlo Checchinato. The latter was sin-binned after 35 minutes for taking a swipe at Magne when the French skipper appeared to be doing a tap-dance on Dallan.

Italy were 12-3 up at that point, thanks to the boot of local Stade Francais hero Diego Dominguez but, with only 14 men, they crumbled - conceding a first try to Damien Traille and going in 19-12 down at half-time. The visitors' assistant coach, John Kirwan, said: 'If you watch the video, I think anyone in Carlo's situation would act the same. We can't condone acts of foul play but he saw one of his team-mates being fouled.' Head coach Brad Johnstone said he would not be citing Magne but, once others in higher authority watch the tape, Magne may yet find himself in trouble - possibly even suspended.

Irish referee Alan Lewis had already sin-binned French forward David Auradou early in the first half and, as the second period progressed, he sent three more Italians - Marco Bortolami, Matthew Phillips and Dominguez - to the bin for offences ranging from persistent offside to killing the ball.

An injury-time try from Serge Betsen put some gloss on the scoreline but there is no doubt the Italian preference for playing on the fringes of offside disrupted the French, forcing a series of horrible handling errors.