Six Nations comment: Fast start leads a French filleting for Ireland, just like days of old

The home side got off to a flier at the Stade de France. 

Théo Attissogbe of France beats the tackle from Jack Crowley of Ireland on his way to scoring his side's fifth try. Pic: Seb Daly/Sportsfile

Rules that should never be broken in Paris? Always order the onion soup, avoid the Louvre like the plague after 10 in the morning, and never, ever give the French a head start out in the plains of Saint-Denis.

Give them a 29-0 lead and, well… Ireland had faced France eleven times in the Six Nations here at the Stade de France since Brian O’Driscoll wrote a hat-trick and his name into legend. The team to score first won eight of them and one ended in stalemate when Ireland got the scoreboard going first.

The away win in 2014, when Maxime Machenaud landed two initial penalties, and the 10-9 French victory two years later when Ireland had dominated an awful opponent through the first-half, are the two exceptions here.

Maintaining composure, individual and collective, is all fine in theory. Doing it in practice against a home side replete with France’s talent and at a stadium where the pre-game show could scramble the senses all on its own is another thing.

Ireland did plenty right in the opening phases. The scrum, without so many key props, more than held its own. A lineout that has been a problem area was allowed to go uncontested. Jamison Gibson-Park’s box kicks were contestable - though not being won.

(Please, no more with the ‘Gaelic football catching skills’ nonsense) There were still six minutes until half-time when Charles Ollivon landed for France’s third try. La Marseillaise was being thundered out, the crowd was roaring ‘zero’ every time Ireland’s score was mentioned, and slo-mo TV shots of exhaling Irish players were de rigeur.

An Ireland squad boasting a dozen British and Irish Lions in its ranks, plus a captain who would have joined them in Australia only for injury, was being filleted like the fish in La Grand Epicerie on the rue de Sèvres.

We’d seen this movie before. In the black and white 70s, the monochrome 80s and the colourless 90s. And more often than not through the noughties, as when O’Driscoll’s waltzes were followed by a record 44-5 loss here two years later.

This was France’s biggest win in the fixture in 16 years.

Strip away the light shows and the rap music and it was all every bit as bleak as the days of old in Parc des Princes when they let a cockerel loose on the field and the Irish were cooped up in a nightmare of no escape.

This place does that. It cracks a team. And Ireland had arrived in a fragile state.

The 18 first-half missed tackles and the rush-of-blood-to-the-head stuff that started to creep into their defensive efforts were only compounded by a limited attack that went nowhere through the hands and came back at them even faster via a lost aerial battle.

France were sublime. Pattern established, it felt impossible to break.

South Africa got a strange kick out of suffocating Ireland at the back end of November. France looked to make it a death by a thousand cuts. Until, like in 2007, and in the 2003 World Cup quarter-final, they pulled up and let a beaten opponent breathe.

The way in which Ireland hit back for their two tries from Nick Timoney and Michael Milne was really just the very least expected of them. What that can’t do is disguise just how outclassed Andy Farrell’s team was yet again by one of the game’s best.

Absences through injuries and a suspension on this night have to be presented as evidence to any court in session but the vast majority of what we saw was deeply concerning for a team that still has to face England in Twickenham.

Truth be told, Italy and the others should be licking some lips right now too.