Ireland Beaten By Strong French Display

It wasn’t the send off that Ireland wanted for Cian Healy, Peter O’Mahony and Conor Murray but Ireland have no complaints about the manner ofthe French victory.

The French supporters were in fine voice as they celebrated a famous bonus point success. They avenged last year’s defeat in Marseille to go top of the table.

Ireland were well beaten on the day, and yellow cards for Joe McCarthy and Calvin Nash proved costly. They salvaged some pride with late tries from replacements Healy and Jack Conan.

With a big impact from their bench, there were four second half tries for les Bleus, shared between Boudehent, player-of-the-match Bielle-Biarrey, replacement Jegou, and Penaud.

Speaking after the game Ireland Captain Caelan Doris said, “France are capable of bits of magic, and we just weren’t good enough for that middle section of the second half. We fought back well at the end, but very disappointing overall. Discipline didn’t help at time, we were down a man, they had a couple of back-to-back penalties which gave entry into our half.

“When they have quick ball with the backs they have and the forwards they have, they’re capable of scoring from anything and they showed that against us today.

“We felt we learned that lesson before where we weren’t accurate enough early on and didn’t convert (pressure into points), and it came back to bite us again today. It’s disappointing.