DUBLIN (AFP) - The Six Nations tournament is set to start this week, but for Ireland the wounds of last year's World Cup still ache and coach Eddie O'Sullivan is taking the brunt of the blame.

The Irish start with a very winnable home clash with Italy at Croke Park on Saturday but 49-year-old O'Sullivan would be justified in thinking that the tournament was already over and his coaching obituary had been written.

He has been lambasted for his selection of essentially the same old faces for his squad with the press fearing that the out of form Simon Easterby and Rory Best will be named in the starting XV when it is announced on Tuesday.

"O'Sullivan to stand or fall with same old familiar faces' read the headline in the Irish edition of the Sunday Times.

The Sunday Independent went further saying: "It's safety first as Eddie dives back into his bunker."

The paper went on to draw a comparison between how France's new coach Marc Lievremont has rung the changes to his squad following the hosts' World Cup flop under his predecessor Bernard Laporte.

"The underlying message will be: I'm keeping faith in you guys so, so you'd better repay the faith," was the message drawn by the press.

O'Sullivan, though, remains defiant in the face of a media and generally antagonistic public while also battling apparently several disgruntled members of the Irish Rugby Football Union board.

"It's the tournament that we look forward to every year as our benchmark," said O'Sullivan, who is seeking to give the Irish their first championship title since 1985.

"It's hard to match for intensity, hard to match in terms of what will happen next."

O'Sullivan is insistent that the World Cup was a blip and that his players will rise to the occasion, which sees them host Italy, Scotland and Wales and have daunting trips to Paris and Twickenham.

"When you come off a bad spell you want to move back to where you feel you should be," said O'Sullivan, who has just three wins from his last eight tests.

"That's the challenge, to get back to the form we showed in last year's Six Nations.

"That is very doable when you look at the talent and experience in the squad and at how the players have been playing since the World Cup."

For those who wish to see the back of O'Sullivan their knight in shining armour has appeared in the shape of new Wales coach Warren Gatland, who was controversially replaced by his then assistant O'Sullivan seven years ago after reviving the team's fortunes.

Gatland remains diplomatic at least in public about the day that he was handed his dismissal papers and crossed O'Sullivan as he was leaving the hotel and his successor was arriving, but there is still believed to be great bitterness over the manner of his departure from the Kiwi.

"It's seven years ago. We saw each other today (last Wednesday at the Six Nations launch). I shook his (O'Sullivan's hand), said how are you getting on.

"But if people want to create a match-up like that, isn't that the sort of intrigue of the competition?" said Gatland with the thinnest of smiles.