Ireland faced France at the Aviva Stadium this afternoon for their second Six Nations fixture. The men in green were hoping to make amends for their poor performance against Italy last weekend, but despite a much improved display and a bitter fight to the end, Ireland fell to a narrow 22 – 25 loss against Marc Lièvremont‘s men.
Ireland began their campaign in style, with Luke Fitzgerald touching down after just three minutes. However, the referee decided it came off a forward pass and awarded the subsequent scrum to France.
After a few handling errors from France, the ball landed back into the arms of the Irishmen, with newly-capped Fergus McFadden diving over the try line, five minutes in, to score his first International try. Jonathan Sexton added the conversion. Ireland 7 France 0.
A solid scrum from Ireland after the restart looked certain to end in another try for the home side, before Tomas O’Leary knocked on.
Minutes later and Ireland’s Sean O’Brien was penalised for not rolling away and France’s Morgan Parra opted for the posts, landing his first penalty of the game. Ireland 7 France 3.
Sixteen minutes into the match and France prop Nicolas Mas was penalised at the scrum, allowing Sexton the chance to opt for the posts. His kick was once again on target, widening his team’s lead. Ireland 10 France 3.
France dominated play and possession after the restart but an excellent turnover ball from Cian Healy brought the home team back into the mix. Both teams battled hard to gain any territory, with Ireland emerging victorious until McFadden was penalised for holding on after he became separated from his teammates. Parra immediately opted for the posts, and landed his second penalty. Ireland 10 France 6.
As the second quarter got under-way, Parra had another chance to lessen the points’ gap after Ireland were penalised at the breakdown. He split the posts with his kick, bringing it to a one-point game. Ireland 10 France 9.
Twenty five minutes played and a fantastic break from Fitzgerald brought his side deep into the French half, but unforced errors by the hosts ended any opportunities of adding to the scoreboard.
Three minutes later however, and Parra had the opportunity to take his side into the lead for the first time with another penalty. Ireland 10 France 12.
Ireland continued to push the opposition hard and it was 38 minutes before they reaped the rewards when O’Leary slipped inside the French defence to touch down. Unfortunately, Sexton couldn’t add the conversion as it was pushed to the right of the posts but Ireland were going into the second half knowing they had the lead. Ireland 15 France 12.
It was ten minutes into the second half before any points were scored, with Parra taking the honours after an Ireland infringement. He slotted the ball between the posts to equalise the scores. Ireland 15 France 15.
However, France retaliated on 55 minutes with Rougerie breaking through Ireland’s defence before offloading to Medard who dived over for his sides’ first try. Yachvili added the extras. Ireland 15 France 22.
A further Irish infringement minutes later allowed France to add another three points to the board. Ireland 15 France 25.
Undeterred, Ireland clawed back to slowly make their way towards the oppositions’ 22. It was a hard and tense time for the Irishmen, who had to go through a tiring 25 phases before Heaslip slid into the right-hand corner. O’Gara, who took over the kicking duties from Sexton, added the conversion after the ball bounced off the left upright and over. Ireland 22 France 25.
With ten minutes left to play, France had possession and were quite content to just wind the clock down. However a knock-on from the team in the dying moments allowed Paul O’Connell to gather and drive his way up field again. Ireland were millimetres from France’s try line and looked certain to cause an upset by scoring a try to steal the lead. Sadly, an unforced error put an end to the home sides’ final blitz and as the whistle blew, France remained undefeated in this year’s Championship.
6 responses to “The French Connection Part 3: Ireland 22 France 25”
Ballpark
I agree the criticism of Best is at best uninformed and at worst provincialism by certain sets of supporters. Don’t think he has been on top form mind and whatever Emerald rugby might say about the penalty he gave away, he was clearly the object of the referees attention and should have got himself out of the way.
Disagree completely about him being unfit though, as on Sunday he was the forward most visible (red scrum hat helps identify him) getting wide to cover in defence. Also he does the unspectacular to good effect, ie covering at rucks, tackling and clearing out as opposed to spectacular charges down the blindside which some fans seem to think is all a hooker should do to merit 8 out of 10.
Munsterfans have spent the last months or so targetting Rory Best and it’s to wind up certain Ulster posters who frequently rise to the bait. It also helps take attention away from the poor performance and form of certain Munster players.
For my money DK has selected a raft of Leinster players to play a different style of rugby to what they’re playing with their province. To see some Leinster players playing on the Ireland was to think they’d never played together before.
Hopefully Mote will will stick to the Turnips message boards and stop boring the readers here. Here is a proper assessment of Best’s game from EmeraldRugby.com
Just blame the hooker…
Rory Best has also been growing in confidence, and in my opinion the Ulsterman took a lot of misinformed flack over his performance against France. It seems to have become the norm to blame most set-piece malfunctions on the hooker. He is the easy target and few people will disagree with an opinion expressed against a hooker. Why is that? The answer is pretty simple, the vast majority of ‘opinions’ are seriously unqualified.
Let’s look at Best’s performance. In the loose he was outstanding, during one passage of play in the first half, as France looked to breach the Irish 22, Best made no less than 5 crunching tackles within one passage of play. His decoy running lines created the space that almost led to Luke Fitzgerald scoring a try in the corner. His work in the lead-up to Heaslips try was unequalled, offering himself as a runner and gaining good yards, clearing out rucks and ensuring the ball was available for a quick recycle and that’s just for starters.
Best’s work in the scrum against one of the top scrummaging hookers in world rugby in Servat was outstanding. He scrummaged low and straight offering Servat little or no reward for his afternoons work forcing the French to resort to a crooked feed in order to ensure they won their own put-in.
Best has been criticised for ‘giving away too many penalties’… more incorrect analysis. Best gave away one penalty the entire game and it was as much the fault of the referee as it was his own. Many think that the penalty on 48 minutes was against Best when in fact it was awarded against Paul O’Connell for the previous passage of play. Best did infringe on 61 minutes, when he joined in to try and stop the rolling French maul. As Best joined the maul it swung to the blindside and as a result Best found himself with hands on the ball at the back of the maul. Referee Dave Pearson then called “2, hands off” when the call should have been a warning to Best that he was offside. Naturally enough Best released the ball and set about driving the player back, as you would in a maul situation, at which point he was penalised for being offside.
From the outside looking in, it’s clear to see that Rory was offside, but from the players perspective in the middle of the maul, the position is not always clear. Had Pearson called ‘offside’ I have no doubt that Best would have got himself back onside before resuming play and I would find it difficult to blame the guy for playing to the referee.
The Lineouts were also supposedly one of Best’s Achilles. Ireland lost three lineouts against France, two of them were dropped by the jumper and one looked to go over the top. If the hooker gets the ball into the hands of the jumper and he then drops it, I fail to see how anyone can blame that on the hooker.
When you look at the lineout that went over the top towards the end of the game, it looks like a straight overthrow but I would like to draw your attention to a couple of factors which may have influenced the success of the movement.
For that specific set-piece there was an excessive amount of movement in the Irish lineout before the throw. It was an overly complex combination of dummy jumps, juxtapositions and counter movements. While all the running around is going on the hooker must throw blind to where the jumper is going to be. As it’s a throw to the tail, it must be taken long before there is an actual target to hit, and the timing between hooker, lifters and jumper must be pinpoint accurate. The fact is, we won’t know if Wallace timed his jump right, or if the lifters got their timing right or if the lift was a few inches off the mark or indeed if the Best threw the ball an inch too high, any one of a number of factors could have caused the overthrow. But when you look at the success Ireland achieved with that throw to the tail, including the lineout which led to Fergus McFaddens try, it’s a tough call to heap all the blame on the hooker.
Best or Cronin! don’t know who was worse, best giving away the last 3 points to France (no to mention the terrible line outs) or Cronin’s fumble at the end, neither are up to the job at this level.
It was afar better display by Ireland and Heaslip was a big influence on the backrows performance. A couple of the penalties awarded to french seem some what harsh.
Most of the Irish fans beleived before the match that Ireland would be down by 15 or more points.
Best came in for a lot of stick on the Munster board after the Italian game so I watched his performance closely, to be honest there is some justification in the comments. On Saturday Best never went faster than a trot across the pitch and frequently failed to join a ruck — to what extent this is due to lack of fitness and/or obedience to team orders is the question but he does appear to be more reluctant to commit to the ruck and maul and seldom was used as aBall carrier– than prioir to the cheek injury but this could be dispensation by DK — recognising he has few alternatives with the absence of Flannery .
But in my opinion he does have to work on his spinting there is little point playing midfield if backs can run round you I suggest he goes blind or narrow side until he regains the fitness in a similiar manner as Hayes did for the last couple of seasons.
Corrections, comments or questions?