5 days ago
11
Ireland’s grand slam chase ended in a hole in the road here and their championship aspirations took a bruising as well, left relying on things to go their way in next weekend’s final round. The hope that Peter O’Mahony, Conor Murray and Cian Healy could sign off their last game on Lansdowne Road with a significant win were scrapped with the final post still in the distance.
France were immense, initially on defence and then – when they had survived that onslaught – in putting the rest of their game together. And they managed for 50 minutes of it without Antoine Dupont.
By the end Ireland were chasing a bonus point to assist them on the last day but came up short on that one as well. What for 45 minutes was an epic Test match had become something else altogether.
The start was pulsating: Ireland were held up over the line and saw a penalty come back off the woodwork while France had a try ruled out for a forward pass. And that was all in 14 minutes.
If before the game you wondered about the effect of France maybe bringing the perfect balance between their power game and brilliant skills then it changed quickly to the quality of their defence. It threw up surely one of the most skewed stats seen in Test rugby: 81 tackles made by the away side to just four from their hosts in the opening 15 minutes.
How did it keep France’s tryline intact? Because the effect of their double-teaming in defence slowed Ireland’s momentum, which allowed the process to start all over again. The light at the end of this tunnel for Ireland was that surely France would run out of steam.
The flipside was that all the possession over 40 minutes – by which stage the ratio had slowed to 2:1 on the tackle front, in Ireland’s favour – yielded just six points, the later half coming from a 50m penalty by Jamie Osborne with the last kick of the half.
The only try of the half was a clinical effort from the try-scoring machine that is Louis Bielle-Biarrey a matter of seconds after Joe McCarthy was sent to the sin-bin.
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Yet the most significant incident in a jam-packed 40 was the exit of Dupont on the half-hour after Tadhg Beirne landed on his knee at a breakdown. With a 7-1 split on the bench that left France sweating over further injuries behind the scrum as they faced the second half 8-6 in front.
Ireland had to speed up their phase game and did so immediately, providing the platform for a Dan Sheehan try. The advantage lasted all of four minutes until they were hit with a double shot, first from Paul Boudehent and then Bielle-Biarrey with his second. At 22-13 to France – and Calvin Nash in the sin-bin – that looked a match-winning lead, with the replacements being rolled into action. That is when the power and pace got on to the same page, forcing the depleted home team to work overtime to stay alive.
From there it was in danger of getting ugly and a couple of late tries from Healy and Jack Conan balanced up the scoreline a bit. It didn’t ease the pain for anyone in green, though.
