Bemand: We Had Plenty Of Moments, But France Were More Clinical

It is not often in the last 10 years that Ireland have been in contention to claim a result against France, and while Saturday’s Guinness Women’s Six Nations opener got away from them in the end, there were obvious reasons for optimism.

France came away from Kingspan Stadium with a hard-fought 27-15 win, which owed much to their clinical attacking in the first quarter, and full-back Morgane Bourgeois’ unblemished goal-kicking return of 12 points.

Ireland (sponsored by Aon) were left trailing 14-0 after Gabrielle Vernier and co-captain Marine Ménager had touched down inside the opening 17 minutes, but seized the initiative after the break to make it a two-point game.

Aoife Wafer used the hosts’ reliable lineout platform to thunder over for two tries, with a second maul effort, scored by Neve Jones, coming just after Vernier’s yellow card for a high tackle on Eve Higgins which was upgraded to a red.

Scott Bemand’s side could not fully capitalise on that sending-off, though, and Bourgeois’ impressive right boot, coupled with a closing try from replacement Émilie Boulard, took a fiercely-contested first round fixture out of Ireland’s reach.

Head coach Bemand praised France for how they saw out the contest, something his squad are still learning about given there were five 21-year-olds starting, three Six Nations debutants involved, and four Sevens stars, including a first-time captain, returning to the Championship fold.

“France are great, they had a tough WXV1 and a few months away training, and we knew they would come here full of confidence,” he said, speaking after the start of his second Six Nations campaign with Ireland.

“Before the Six Nations starts, nobody has dropped a ball. We knew they would try and start fast. We were also trying to play with tempo and we caught them napping a couple of times, and a couple of areas we were a little unlucky.

“A couple of times we were able to get our game on the front foot, but against a big physical pack, how we can impact them with our game, speed of thought, speed of mind, but staying composed. That just moved away from us a little bit today.

“But we are building resilience. We’ve got a resilient group.. It would be nice to get a few of those points a little earlier, and then had the composure and experience to see it home when we had the opportunity at around 70 minutes.”

Ireland’s radar was just slightly off as Dannah O’Brien missed a kickable conversion to make it 17-all, and they conceded a total of 20 turnovers and had 31 handling errors. If those mistakes could have been limited somewhat, it may have been a different result.

Despite that high error count, the hosts showed their quality to chase down les Bleues, using their maul as a big weapon. They just lost momentum during the final 10 minutes when the visitors, rallying from the setback of the red card, conjured a clinching try.

On the positive side for Ireland, it was the first time they scored three tries against France since 2019, and Bemand’s charges also restricted the French to their lowest score in this match-up in seven years. They had averaged 46.75 points from the last four meetings.

Runners-up in each of the last five Six Nations tournaments, France may have quite a young team too, but their matchday 23 contained 542 Test caps compared to Ireland’s 414.

They had some key contributions from slick scrum half Pauline Bourdon Sansus, with 61 caps to her name, Vernier, who reached the half-century mark in Belfast, and Ménager and Agathe Sochat who have also played over 50 times for their country.

For the girls in green, the task now is to regroup quickly, learn from those inaccuracies in pressure situations and build a wnning performance in Parma next Sunday as they aim for their first victory over Italy since 2022.

“We were just talking at the end there and the narrative with the group (is) we don’t want to be noble losers,” insisted Bemand. “We don’t want to put up a good fist of it against a good France team. With ten minutes to go, we felt we could go on and win.

“They’re a young group still. They’ve got to be in those positions. We’ve had some experience, like at the end of the New Zealand game in WXV1 when we were able to come back and win it.

“But coming out here against these tier 1 nations and World Cup contenders, we thought it would come down to those last 20 minutes.

“You’re going to need to have that composure, not belief really, just calmness of thought that you can execute where you want to be on the pitch, how you get there, and then you take those opportunities.

“So, it does feel like we’ve lost a game we could have been in, and I think them scoring at the end takes the scoreboard away a little bit. We can rue (not getting) a losing bonus point, but as a group we’re more disappointed that we weren’t fighting in their 22 to win the game.

“With a young group and particularly with a World Cup on the horizon, this very well could be a quarter-final. We said to the group, we want to get to that World Cup and know the next time we meet France, we can beat them.

“It’s obviously not gone our way today but I think we think we can beat them the next time we meet them.”

Despite missing out on a winning start to 2025 in front of a 6,976-strong crowd, Ireland laid some particularly solid foundations for the rest of the Championship with 18 lineout wins out of 19, four scrums won and none lost, and 62% of their rucks being between 0-3 seconds.

While France outkicked them and were the tidier team in possession, the home side led the way with 149 carries for 800 metres – and 409 metres gained – and had six linebreaks to the visitors’ two.

One of those was a brilliant Aoife Dalton-led surge down the left during the first half. It got Stacey Flood to within metres of the try-line before an O’Brien cross-field kick towards Anna McGann failed to work out.

The young out-half managed to pin France back just before half-time, but a knock-on let France off the hook after Erin King had stolen the lineout, and Niamh O’Dowd, on her first Six Nations start, had punched a hole in the defence.

Referencing those moments when Ireland were threatening deep inside the French 22, Bemand added: “If you look at the size of the packs, we’re against a reasonably formidable athletic team. At times, they lost their shape a little bit, so there will be plenty of little bits we need to go away and work on to fire a few more shots.

“We adapted a bit after half-time as their linespeed had been putting pressure on the first catcher, but we have to be able to handle that pressure.

“So, it is a bit of a chastening experience sitting here now and being hugely disappointed with a game that we were in, because we also had plenty of moments, plenty of opportunities.

“We had five entries into their 22, they had six. So probably a little more clinical there than we were. That means we are rueing the earlier missed opportunities even more.”