The final table never lies? Strictly speaking, the Six Nations is a misnomer in that regard, as it is not a fully fledged, home-and-away Championship and Ireland are disadvantaged in having England and France away in even years.
There’s no great shame in losing to the newly crowned 2020 champions in Twickenham and the runners-up in Paris last Saturday night, while beating the fellow Celts and Italy at home. It’s about par for the course, much like Eddie O’Sullivan’s first year in 2002 when three home thrashings were set against two heavy away defeats.
The title of 2014, completed by a fine win in the Stade de France, and the 2018 Grand Slam coronation in Twickenham were exceptions. The latter was the first time Ireland won in both London and Paris in the same year since 1972. Yet they set a high bar which, in Andy Farrell’s first campaign, has not been reached.
“It’s disappointing. It’s disappointing,” admitted Farrell in a corridor of the Stade de France late on Saturday night. “We thought we were in with a shout today and we’ll certainly look back on that game when there was a trophy on the line and really take a good look at ourselves and the fact that it’s an opportunity missed. There were opportunities for us to win that match and yeah, we fluffed our lines at times.”
Ireland recovered from conceding an early try to the brilliant Antoine Dupont, whom they otherwise contained fairly well in a first-half performance before a lack of accuracy on the ball, lineout malfunctions and a brief flurry of French penalties saw the game slip away in an error-prone second-half.
Reward
However, Farrell maintained he detected a lack of belief in the first-half amongst his players, explaining: “They didn’t have the edge in the first half to get the reward for the positions that we got ourselves in. I thought 100 per cent if we had had more intent with our game then that would have added to the belief. What I’m trying to say is, really, that there were six or seven tries in that game for us and we came away with three in the end.
“At the top level that’s the game isn’t it? If you want to win trophies, that is the game. When you get opportunities away from home in big games like that, that is the difference in the end. We had plenty of opportunities today that we didn’t capitalise on for a whole range of reasons.”
France scored four tries to three with less possession and less time in the opposition half or 22 by dint of their greater ability to manufacture openings, often through instinctive, heads-up plays. Farrell admitted that to have any hope of stifling that French flair they have to be smothered or, as he put it: “Well, you don’t feed the energy, really, that we actually gave them in the end.”
“The reason that they were off-loading and making yards towards the end of the game was because of an array of errors from our point of view. Obviously that gives them legs and obviously at that stage they probably knew that they had won the game as well so they started expressing themselves a little bit more.
“But I felt they were very dangerous, they obviously keep the ball a lot but I felt they were very dangerous, very clinical in what they did and I suppose that was the difference in the end.”
In chasing the game, Farrell replaced Johnny Sexton with 11 minutes to go, and given the captain's understandable displeasure much ado will be made about very little, ie his head-shaking reaction.
“I don’t think there was any malice in that,” said Farrell. “I think he was more disappointed with the stuff that we’d done to be fair to him really.”
Jacob Stockdale will be the fall guy for many supporters but Farrell defended his fumble of "a slippy pill" for France's first-half penalty try.
Disappointed
“He’ll be disappointed with that but having said that there’s plenty good in Jacob’s game and I suppose like many of the players they’ll be disappointed with a few things; his try, he adds something to us in our exiting kicking game etc. Obviously, he’ll look at his errors but there were errors across the board.”
The Irish players flew back to Ireland yesterday after being the only guests in their Parisian hotel for three nights and could at least look forward to spending four nights in their homes before coming together again on Thursday in readiness for the first of four Autumn Nations Cup games against Wales at the Aviva Stadium next Friday week, November 13th.
With less prize money and no world ranking points on offer in this one-off competition, Farrell has scope to experiment.
“Well, we need to keep growing our squad obviously. That goes without saying really, that has to be the approach the whole time. There will be combinations we probably need to find out about and hopefully we can keep going down the line of competition for places which is going to be good for us in the long run.”
