496 : France v Ireland wrap

🏉 Rucks & collisions

🏉 The three P’s

🏉 Après set pieces

🏉 Selections

🏉 Calls & non-calls

Craig Grehan

All in all. Good day out. Look we know we’re in transition and we’re not the numero uno team anymore. SA and France are. Very different teams. Who we need to figure out new ways to beat them.

Good things, our lineout outclassed and manhandled theirs.

Scrums without our big names in the front row definitely held their own.

Sam P silenced his can’t tackle haters (a bit) by hitting a fair few.

Stockdale can still be a threat.

When we move ball we can scare teams.

Cian P was immense.

We still gave France a good rattle fir 25 minutes.

The referees helped France by not seeing 2 forward passes, and a knock on by France.

And not the deliberate yellow one.

The not so good:

We kept kicking despite it not really working.

Despite our scrum and lineout platform, we looked game rusty, silly knock ons, not running hard.

Which is easily settled by picking game ready players.

Some sloppy defending.

Doris is our least aggressive backrow.

No leader on the pitch to say “this isnt working”.

The ref missing the above mentioned things haha

Odran John OBrien

France outstanding no one will come near to them playing like this

Kevin Kelehan

Fixed the perceived problems, scrum solid, gave away 3 penalties in the entire game, only one preventable, line out held up against French going after it. Sam Prendergast’s tackling was arguably the best of the Irish backs. Then they kicked and kicked and kicked when it was clear the French has superior aerial skills. 22-0 at half time and 29-0 down at nearly an hour and it looked like a hiding. Then they woke up and were unlucky the ref didn’t card Dupont when 29-14, they could with a man advantage have got a lot closer. Next game out through Edogbo in at 5, Furlong will be back, put Beirne in at 6 and hopefully the 3 larger ball carriers will get us more yards when we have the ball. France deservedly on their way to retaining their championship

Christy O’Connor

Can’t say I expected any other outcome on the result. The scrum done a lot better than I expected. We are well off the pace and Farrell needs to start picking more players that are in form rather than ticking with the same old faces. This could be the unraveling of Andy’s time in charge if he doesn’t get a grip on this.

Peter Mcconnell

For me it was the commitment in the tackle. For some reason French players were able to power through the tackle sufficiently to offload, or make more metres. In previous years the Irish tacklers have done a pretty good job of halting the attacking players. I don’t know if it is a lack of aggression on behalf of the Irish tacklers, or just a brute fore determination by the French, but I have no doubt it were we lost was at the contact.

Ann Marie Crean

Just not up to scratch 😒 😫

End of

Cormac Mannion

Good to see Cian P do so well, Milne too. The subs did very well when they came on and it did make a difference but France had taken their foot off the gas by that stage. Lineout and scrum were good.

Our defence is shambolic. Players don’t seem to know what they’re supposed to be doing and our attack plan was dire. We seem to look better when we have two playmakers on the field (Crowley and Sam), similar to Leinster when Sam and Harry were on the pitch at the same time.

Osborne is a fine player but looked rusty last night and has all the speed of an oil tanker when he’s turning. Stockdale – didn’t reproduce his early season form. Ringrose – barely saw the ball.

So much wrong (injuries aside) and the players looked jaded from the very beginning

Shaun Berger‬ (BlueSky)

Timoney was great.

Ire outplayed  and outfought in so many areas. But one thing I dont see mentioned much:

Did we even win one bloody aerial battle? Even when it looked like we caught it Fra seemed to end up with the ball.

ROUND 2

SATURDAY 14 FEBRUARY 2026
Ireland v Italy, 2:10pm, Aviva Stadium
Scotland v England, 4:40pm, Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium

SUNDAY 15 FEBRUARY 2026
Wales v France, 3:10pm, Principality Stadium

TUESDAY

BONUS CHAT : “WEEKEND ROUNDUP”

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