Italy Rugby coach Conor O'Shea says there were too many mistakes in his side's 47-22 win over Namibia in their Pool B opener at the World Cup.
The Azzurri crossed over seven times for tries and led at half-time 21-7 against the African team in Osaka earlier this morning. However, they still have South Africa and New Zealand to come in the pool stages, with a win against at least one of them to keep their hopes of getting to the knock-out stages alive.
They currently sit on top of Pool B after the bonus-point win - one ahead of the All Blacks.
"We'll have to move on from that pretty quickly," said O'Shea. "It wasn't very pretty. There was too many errors in it and it was difficult conditions at times in the second half, which doesn't excuse it.
"We're disappointed with the way we played. We have a job to do in these first two games and you know that's not the true version of us, but we'll improve massively by the time we come to Thursday."
"It's a quick turnaround and you make lots of changes when you have the game in the bag that sometimes you shouldn't but you lose the continuity you might have started to build up.
"We just didn't get the pace into the game that we wanted. It was difficult out there and credit to Namibia anyway, but we'll take five points and we'll move on quickly."
Namibia's Welsh-born coach Phil Davies, however, had a different opinion of how his side got on. He said, "I'm very proud of the players, the way we adapted to the speed of the game, some of the tries we scored and some of the resolute defence.
"You know I was really happy, but credit to Italy, you know, they put a bit of pressure on and scored at crucial times and they deserve the win."
Everyone’s in the Team Of Us.
Vodafone. The Official Sponsor of the Irish Rugby Team.
Download the brand new OffTheBall App in the Play Store & App Store right now! We've got you covered!
Subscribe to OffTheBall's YouTube channel for more videos, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for the latest sporting news and content.
