Five takeaways from Ireland v France

Adam Kyriacou
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Following a 15-13 victory for France over Ireland in their Six Nations game, here’s our five takeaways from Sunday’s match at the Aviva Stadium.

Captain Fantastic

Despite a committed display from the home team, France managed a vital win in Dublin with Captain Fantastic Charles Ollivon’s try-scoring exploits again taking his side home in a close-fought game.

The match was a wonderful affair of attack and counter-attack, with Ireland dominating possession but never managing to play enough rugby in the French red zone to gather the points that their industry in carry and kick deserved.

For France, an unbeaten record and a win on the road is gold dust for them in their bid for a Grand Slam, whilst Ireland, despite a second successive loss, will have learned a lot about both their selection and their tactics.

A word too for the officials – in the last two weekends there’s been a little flak flying around in the direction of referees over close calls, but today Luke Pearce’s empathy and willingness to encourage attacking rugby gave us an outcome of a two point difference, a total of only 14 penalties in the game and a result that neither side could complain about. In short, he and his team were excellent.

The French spine

Pivotal to France’s win was the spine of their team – hooker, number eight, scrum/fly-half, full-back. They were absolutely magnificent to a man, from the rampaging charges of Julien Marchand at hooker, to the boot and aerial slip-fielding of Brice Dulin.

However, the half-back partnership of Matthieu Jalibert and Antoine Dupont were simply compelling all day. Dupont fused no-look passes with devastating breaks, towering pin-point kicks and, in the last moment of the game, decided to try his luck at openside flanker and stole from an Irish ruck to seal the victory for his team.

There’s absolutely no doubt the Toulouse nine is the best in his position in the world right now, and on today’s evidence, there’s a claim he might be the best rugby player in the world too.

Jalibert was the perfect foil for his genius of a scrum-half, fizzing passes at pace, joining in with the offload game and producing some divine touches, one of which sent Damian Penaud over for France’s second try to add to the offload for his captain’s opener.

One moment in the first half underlined just how gifted the Bordeaux pivot is; a howitzer 50 metre kick to the Irish back three off his left foot was returned back to him by Hugo Keenan. Jalibert took one look, beat an on-rushing defender and planted a siege gun 60 metre kick, this time off his right boot, down deep into the Irish half and into touch.

With these two (and Romain Ntamack) at the helm, France are becoming not only an incredibly hard side to beat, but a particularly pleasing side to watch.

Disconnection

Despite a doughty effort from the Irish pack, who probably shaded the set-pieces and achieved at least parity on the gainline, the lack of control shown by the Irish half-backs and midfield was concerning.

A lot of the issues were caused by the dreadfully slow and inaccurate passing of Jamison Gibson-Park at the base, who did well with the boot and the break, but provided his colleagues in the backline with some appallingly poor ball with Barnes-Wallis passes and inaccuracy killing any chance of usable moves.

When you’ve two rookie fly-halves both feeling their way into international rugby, basic passing accuracy is a given at this level and it was no wonder that both Billy Burns and Ross Byrne struggled to get momentum.

This resulted in Ireland having to kick hard earned ball away far too often, or were forced to start running into contact far too deeply in their own half.

Andy Farrell clearly had pointed this out to his charges in the break and in the second half, we saw Ireland’s efforts, inspired by a cameo of a performance from James Lowe, who popped up everywhere but particularly in midfield, to try and get extra numbers around the outside of a narrow French push defence.

Many criticise the amount of kicking in Test rugby these days, but there’s not much reward for handling in your own half in the modern game and Ireland found that out to their cost.

Fortitude

The biggest questions around France have always been that of temperament and emotion. When Bernard Le Roux was sin-binned for a cheeky little trip, Les Bleus of old might just have capitulated amongst a series of Gallic expletives. Not this side, however. They dug deep, stuck to plan, and used the Irish attack to turn over, then 30 seconds later, Jalibert, Dupont and Gael Fickou offloaded magical little passes that sent Ollivon over for his try.

Then, with a few minutes left in the game, we saw a continued wave of Irish attack nullified legally and at source by brilliant defence across the park by France that made Ireland lose 20 metres backwards resulted in a player becoming isolated and Dupont robbing the ruck ball to seal the win.

France not only have a rich crop of talent, but they’re managing their emotions much better and are a side that are very focused. They hung on twice in adversity and if they continue in their upward trajectory, the rugby world can be very scared.

Lessons learned

In defeat, Ireland will have learned a lot about their team. Tadhg Beirne is their find of the season and again was a powerful force in every area of the pitch, as were CJ Stander and Andrew Porter, However, they’ll conclude from this game that Will Connors now needs to start to shore up the physicality that’s been missing ever since Sean O’Brien left the Irish scene in place of the lightweight Josh van der Flier.

The half-backs will come under immense scrutiny as mentioned above and they need to find players that can give control off the back foot, especially when clearing defensively.

But above all, they’ll learn you can’t play rugby in your own half for 30 minutes of the game and expect to win – the only way you score points is in the opposition half, and modern rugby is now very much a game of territory over possession.

For France, they’ll be delighted with all aspects of their play but perhaps will still be concerned about the balance of their back-row. François Cros’ injury has left a space open at openside flank (or, as France call it, le grattuer) and neither Anthony Jelonch nor Dylan Cretin have quite yet filled his shoes. Wenceslas Lauret or Cameron Woki may yet get recalls, but right now, Cros’ grit at the breakdown is sorely missed.

They’ll also want to consider their goal-kicking; for all of Jalibert’s brilliance elsewhere today, he had a poor return off the tee and had he nailed his conversion and penalties France may not have had the defensive pressure they endured at the end.

But, for both sides there was a lot to take out of the match, whether positive or in terms of fixable ‘work ons’. Both teams will look forward to a week off before they resume in a fortnight’s time and will emerge better for what they learned this afternoon.

by James While

 

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