Highlights: Ireland Fightback Falls Short

Ireland trailed France 0-14 midway through the first half and were 5-17 at half-time but fought back to withing two points before the experience of the visitors and some home team mistakes yielded a French victory 15-27.

It was Ireland’s best result against France in some time but Head Coach Scott Bemand said afterwards that this squad are focused on knowing that they can beat teams at this level.

“We were just talking at the end there, and the narrative with the group, we don’t want to be noble losers, 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.”

“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.

“And 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.So we can rue a losing bonus points or what have you, but as a group we’re more disappointed that we weren’t fighting in their 22 to win the game.

“But with a young group and particularly with a World Cup on the horizon, this very well could be a quarter-final. And 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.”