by In the last two seasons, the winner of this match has gone on to win the grand slam as well. Given the way Ireland went about their work in this 38-17 win over Marseille, you get the sense that they’re going to stop again this year, perhaps more so than any of the other four teams in the championship. can be offered.
Three months on from the World Cup, the game was promoted as a small glimpse of what the final could be. In fact, only the Irish were the same as they were in that tournament. In fact, the game was the first look at these two teams’ answers to the question that has been hanging over them since those last rounds – what now? France clearly haven’t responded yet, they were all over the place, and their performance was full of handling errors and missed tackles.
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They badly missed the leadership of Antoine Dupont, and his ability to turn a game when he is going against his team. On the other hand, Ireland came forward as strong and slick as ever, and even better at set pieces.
It is clear that Ireland were doing some repair work on their line out, which was very successful by the end of the World Cup. France tried it early with a penalty kick, the Irish won that one to throw at Tadhg Beirne, followed by two more in the next few minutes. One of them was in their own 22, after Hugo Keenan, the other in the France game, tackled Damian Penaud after Peter O’Mahony smartly picked out Jack Crowley to send a penalty into the corner. That lineout ended with a penalty just before the posts, putting Crowley ahead to give them three nil.
It was first blood for the Irish then, and it seemed that they were stronger for the sight. Moments later, they were a man down as well, after Paul Willemse was shown a yellow card, and sent to the bunker, after clattering into Andrew Porter’s head. Porter was tackling Mathieu Jalibert at the time, and Willemse, charging through afterwards, caught him square on the jaw with his shoulder. The French finally got some relief nine minutes later when the referee, Karl Dickson, told his skipper Gregory Alldritt that Willemse was going to be allowed back into the game. Temporarily so, as it turned out.
Alldritt didn’t have much time to enjoy the good news. Minutes later Jamison Gibson-Park scored Ireland’s first try. He came off the back of a couple of barnstorming runs from Bundee Aki, who clearly carried his red hot form from the World Cup into this year’s championship. Jonathan Danty and Gaël Fickou have one of the best midfields in France, but Aki made a hamburger out of them.
The Irish had started so quickly that the French were already clinging to their nails. They only managed to stop Ireland scoring again a few minutes later, when Crowley was tackled just short of the line, and the ball was held up by Tadhg Furlong after diving for it. Crowley then missed a penalty from the front, and the French finally got a grip on the game when Tomas Ramos kicked their first three points. It represented another swing in the momentum of the game, as things immediately began to go from bad to worse for the French.
Moments later Peato Mauvaka hit Crowley with a dump tackle, which would have been all well and good if Crowley hadn’t already sent the ball to Beirne, who made the run through the gaping hole left by Mauvaka in the French line to score, unopposed, under the posts. That made it 17-3, then, and then a minute after Willemse was shown a second yellow for another shoulderer, this one on Caelan Doris. Once, of course, as another Irishman memorably said, it could be considered unlucky, twice begins to look careless.
We’ll need a lip reader to tell us if that’s what Porter was whispering as Willemse walked off the pitch. Now they were 14 points down, and with only 14 men left, France finally started to play. They put together their best attack of the half (to be fair, they only made two of them, so they were narrow picks), and engineered a four-on-two overlap that allowed Penaud to score to make it 17-10. Ireland extended play, and their lead with it, early in the second half when Calvin Nash scored in the corner.
Which should be decided, but, as it often seems on the way these days, France played better with 14 than with 15. They came together when Paul Gabrillagues scored a kick and go . But that rule works both ways, Ireland scored again when they were down to 14 themselves, when Dan Sheehan drove over after they had kicked another penalty.
O’Mahony in the same passage played when he was sent to the bin because he fell flat in the run up. Ronan Kelleher added one more in a similar move in the final minutes to seal the deal. So Ireland are already favorites for the title, and the French have a lot more thinking to do.
