Ragged Ireland suffer Six Nations drubbing in Toulouse

The lop-sided nature of this defeat indicates the mountain Ireland face in their current rebuilding phase.

Sat, 02 Apr, 2022 - 16:45

Cliona Foley

Women's Six Nations: France 40 Ireland 5

IRELAND have never won a women’s Six Nations game in France and that trend continued with this particularly painful 35-point drubbing in Toulouse.

The particularly lop-sided nature of this defeat indicates the mountain that they face in their current rebuilding phase.

They got off to a promising start when, trailing 0-3, one of Sam Monaghan’s trademark reverse hand-offs off the back of an untidy first line-out put Eve Higgins through for a try in the ninth minute to suddenly lead against the run of play.

But that was immediately disallowed for Dorothy Wall tackling an opponent without the ball and, within minutes, the home side had a try of their own.

It came off the back of the game’s first scrum, which saw the French spread the ball wide, leaving Melissande Llorens with loads of room outside and Eimear Considine unable to stop her.

Caroline Drouin failed to convert it but the home side were soon leading 11-0 when some unforced Irish errors inside their own 22 yielded an easy second penalty.

It needed a great cover tackle by Amee-Leigh Murphy Crowe after 22 minutes to stop Lindelauf putting fullback Boulard through for a second try.

But it came moments later when brilliant French scrum-half Laure Sansus, spotting a gap on the blind-side on a scrum inside the Irish 22, darted in to dot it down off the back of their massively dominant scrum.

They failed to convert it again but a 16-0 lead within 25 minutes indicated just how a tough a day it as going to be for Greg McWilliams inexperienced side whose set-pieces were badly under the cosh from the off.

Aoibheann Reilly made a brave tackle to try to stop the rolling French maul get across the line in the 30th minute but, after consulting with TMO, the ref decided that Audrey Forlani had grounded it.

Drouin was unable to convert again but all her first-half conversions came from very close to the touchline which was indicative of just how wide France were able to drag Ireland.

Ireland desperately needed to find a foothold before half-time but even some good possession was spilled by far too many handling errors, a massive 15 in the first-half alone.

France got in for the bonus-point try even before half-time, when hooker Clara Joyeux pushed over despite Neve Jones best efforts to hold her up.

Ireland went in trailing 26-0 at the break, a score-line that would have been even worse if Drouin had managed to convert any of France’s four first-half tries.

Beibhinn Parsons and Christy Haney were introduced to try to stop the rot but, within four minutes of the re-start, when Ireland failed to clear their lines, France got in for their fifth try.

It was a second and carbon-copy off the back of the scrum again from Sansus, which Drouin finally converted to take their lead to 33-0.

Five minutes later Ireland finally got their only score when, with Linda Djougan leading the charge, they put together some decent phases and the back-line created some rhythm.

Stacey Flood found Eve Higgin’s whose brilliant side-step put her in but unfortunately it wasn’t maximised on the scoreboard when Nicole Cronin missed an easy conversion under the posts.

France then started running their bench and, when Ireland naïvely failed to clear their line again, substitute Jessy Tremoulier opted for a quick tap and sucked in the defence to yield their sixth try for fullback Emilie Boulard in the 67th minute.

Tremoulier nailed the conversion to take it to 40-5 and that’s how it finished even though France lost Boulard to a yellow card in injury-time.

Sansus, who is not usually even their first choice scrum-half , was replaced in the late stages and won Player of the Match, but Ireland did not help themselves at times with some terrible handling and very poor decision-making, especially in defence.

After losing their opening two games they play Italy next, in Musgrave Park, next Sunday.

Scores France: Sansus (2 tries), Llorens (try), Forlani (try), Joyeux (try), Boulard (try), Drouin (2 penalties,1 conv).

Ireland: Higgins (try).

FRANCE: E Boulard, C Banet, M Filopou, G Vernier, M Llorens(try); C Drouin (Tremoulier 56), L Sansus (Chambon 60); C Lindlauf (Deshayes, 57), L Touye, C Joyeux (Khalfaoui 57), M Fall (Ferer 57), A Forlani, A Berthoumieu, G Hermet, R Manager.

IRELAND: E Considine, AL Murphy Crowe, E Higgins, S Flood (Breen 73), L Mulhall (Parsons 41); N Cronin, A Reilly (Dane 56); L Djougang, N Jones (Hooban 56), K O’Dwyer (Haney 41), N Fryday (McGann 73), S Monaghan, D Wall, E McMahon, B Hogan (O’Connor 56).