Ireland assistant Andrew Goodman says Joe McCarthy has been spoken to about his "stupid" yellow card in Saturday's Guinness Six Nations defeat to France.
The Leinster lock received one of two yellow cards for Ireland in the 42-27 defeat, sin-binned for pulling French full-back Thomas Ramos by the collar, off the ball, with France scoring their opening try straight from the resulting penalty.
Having dominated the opening quarter of the game, that score left Ireland trailing 5-0, with Donal Lenihan suggested on RTÉ's Against the Head last night that the second row should be dropped from the starting team for this week's trip to Rome.
Discipline has been a major issue for Ireland since the Rugby World Cup, with Saturday’s two yellow cards bringing their tally in the last 15 games to 12 yellows and a red, while they had picked up just three sin-bins in the previous 29 matches.
"It was a stupid penalty," Goodman said. "We can't be having that. He knows he let down the team there. He was the first to put his hand up.
"Those kind of errors in a game can prove costly, which it did in terms of the little bit of momentum they got after us being on attack for a long period of time."
In better news, Tadhg Furlong is finally set to return from injury against Italy on Saturday.
The tighthead prop has played just once since mid-October due to persistent hamstring and calf injuries, with the Ireland attack coach confirming he is "available to play" the final game of this championship.
"It's great for him. It's been a tough period for him. With Tadhg and the history of the injury, we had to make sure he's right.
"We didn't want to get him back in and have another setback so we've been a little bit cautious with this one to make sure that he's 100% right, so he can come back in and feel confident and comfortable," Goodman added.
Mack Hansen is also likely to be return after missing round four due to a quad injury, while management are optimistic about Rónan Kelleher (neck), and James Lowe, the latter of whom was a late withdrawal from Saturday’s squad after suffering a back spasm in the warm-up.
"They were both out there on the field today running around, so it's looking pretty good," added Goodman, who allayed concerns around an injury for Sam Prendergast, who sported heavy strapping on his knee today, to protect a cut.
The defeat to France now leaves Ireland needing big favours from both Scotland and Wales to win the title, with third-place looking a distinct possibility due to England’s points difference advantage.
And while Goodman (below) admits it was a tough defeat to take, he's backing the team to finish their campaign on a high.
"It was a very restless couple of nights post-Saturday's performance. It was tough to watch and even tougher to watch back so there's a lot of analysis that goes into it as a coach and conversations as a coaching group.
"The first place we look is where we could have been better as a group of coaches to set the players up. The players come in on Sunday, we connect back up on Monday.
"The energy is obviously down a little bit because it's a performance we weren't proud of. We had a good week leading up to it and there were reasons around 50th caps and some great men playing their last home game, as well as destiny being in our hands.
"Now that's taken away so it was a tough couple of days.
"Anything's possible so we've got to focus on our performance. We want a performance that we're proud of but also that our fans are proud of.
"Off the back of that, we'll be hoping Finn Russell can weave some magic in France and we know how tough Wales are at home and they finished well on the weekend and hopefully take some good confidence from that game," he added.
Watch Italy v Ireland in the Six Nations on Saturday from 1.15pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player. Follow a live blog on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app. Listen to live commentary with Saturday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
