In Pics: France 43 Ireland 31 (2)

Pictured above: The Irish management (left-right: forwards coach Niall O’Donovan, head coach Eddie O’Sullivan and manager Ger Carmody) watch on at the Stade de France. Asked to explain why things consistently went wrong for his side during the opening 50 minutes of Saturday’s match, O’Sullivan said: “I can’t explain it. You’ll often make one or two mistakes in a match but we made enough in one game to do us for the whole season. You can’t plan for that – it just happened.

“These guys play at this level all the time and they don’t make these mistakes. I’m not going to beat the guys up over those mistakes, because they tend to not make that many. I don’t know if we played that badly in the first half. Some of the rugby we played, not just in th second half but in the first half, was very good.”

Ronan O’Gara, Ireland’s new record points scorer (563), tries to get through the challenge of French flanker Yannick Nyanga.

Ireland’s midfield combination of Brian O’Driscoll and Gordon D’Arcy. Having scored a try in Ireland’s second half revival, D’Arcy said: “I really did think we would win it. When Andrew (Trimble) went over for his try, I really thought we could do it.

“Crredit to France, they defended well on the try line but we should have sneaked over for one more.”

Ireland winger Shane Horgan tries to slip through the tackle of Yannick Nyanga.

French centre David Marty dots down one of his two tries.

Ireland captain Brian O’Driscoll gets some physio treament from Cameron Steele late on in Saturday’s clash.

**All photos by Andrew Paton and Billy Stickland of Inpho Photography**