Brian O'Driscoll's DiaryThere was massive relief in that performance. Not having won there in 18 years is a long time.

I was six years of age when we won here last time and I didn't really know anything about rugby then. That kind of strikes a note in your thinking. You know, you think about how many teams have gone before you and been unsuccessful. So to come out and play like that was great. Perhaps the scoreline was a little flattering, but I think that overall we deserved to win the match and I think we were the better side out there.

Sure, we came under a lot of pressure early in the second half but I think we dealt with it well. No team is going to lie down if you are ahead of them in a game. They came out fighting in the second half and that was when we had to weather the storm.

Geordan's (Murphy) try gave us a bit of leeway, then David (Humphreys) ran in a try and that gave the team a great lift. They were key tries and both players took their scores incredibly well. Overall, I think we controlled the match very well, particularly from half back, while our pack were also magnificent. Their work rate was phenomenal.

There has been a huge amount of work put in from Mike Ford and, thankfully, that is now paying off for the team. It's all about the system that he is trying to put in place and we've worked really hard at trying to trust the system. Essentially, if everything goes perfectly it won't fail.

Today we did defend well. There are going to be times when you leak tries because of individual errors, but on the whole today Mike should be very pleased because he drilled it into us. He's also done a lot of research into what is needed in certain matches. Today I think he had that aspect of our game almost perfect. Defensively, around the ruck, the boys were just so strong.

At the very beginning, when they believed they had scored a try - I don't know if it would have made any difference to the final outcome if they had scored. It would have been a very unlucky start had it been awarded. It seemed to be a series of errors with the block down, then hitting Humphs, then going off the post, and then the knock on. I was probably the only person in the ground that knew it was a knock on because I was right there. For that reason I was able to breathe a sigh of relief.

Sure it would have been a bit of a set-back. But it wasn't a try and we got the good start to the match that we were looking for.

We got the scores and were 16-0 up by early in the second half. It is difficult to fight back from that and they came back to 16-6. But as I said, we then weathered that storm in the second half and ran in a couple of good scores, which broke us away from them.

Of course it was lovely to receive the man of the match award, but there are aspects of my game about which I was very disappointed. My kicking today was as bad as it has ever been. I lodged it (the ball) in Glen Metcalfe's throat on a couple of occasions. I've got something to work at.

But defensively I was happy enough. There were a couple of opportunities to break and thankfully we scored off one or two of them, well one of them anyway, and Maggsy (Kevin Maggs) came under me another time.

Yes, it's very pleasing when the things that you practice go right on the pitch. It's nice to get a good firm pitch like that. In the last few matches we played conditions weren't so good so it was good to be able to play some running rugby.

Like everyone watching in the stands, we like to throw the ball around and we like to score exciting tries too. We don't want to simply hoof the ball up in the air and chase it. That's not our game.

The incident with Laney? Well, that's happened before. There was no malice in the tackle. I stepped inside and it was a knee-jerk reaction to swing an arm out in the way he did. He caught me a good one, but Brendan (Laney) is not a dirty player and straight away he apologised to me. There are no hard feelings involved.

For next week, yes we are confident but Italy are also a very confident side having beaten Wales.

It's only their second win in the Six Nations. We are going to find it tough against them on Saturday but we are relishing the prospect. I saw the second half of their match and they were impressive enough. They have an extra day to recover and I don't know if that's going to help. It's new to the competition now so it's just something we will have to put up with.

In an interview with Johnny Watterson