Everything about this match was extraordinary, so much of it was incomprehensible. Take the start. In the first 11 minutes Ireland lost two tries, a scrum against the head, a lineout against the throw, all hope and the match. They were dead. So how did they nearly win? In this match life followed death. The first article of faith.
For a game that was so wild and apparently formless, it seems out of place to consult the statistics in search meaning, but the key figures are too astonishing to ignore. Ireland spent more than 60 minutes in French territory and controlled the ball for 14 minutes longer than their hosts; they made 20 line-breaks to France’s six; they completed nearly 200 passes. According to the statistics, they played like France in Paris.
And yet they lost. The most compelling statistic of all was that they conceded six tries in only 50 minutes, most of them bloodless, careless, crazy and soft. The French didn’t need to reach for the blade, they didn’t need to occupy Ireland’s 22, they didn’t need to turn the screw and break Ireland first before feeding on the carcass; it was as if they just slipped something into Ireland’s drink that made them droozy and dopey.
During Ireland’s bad spells in the first half their incompetence was staggering. Ireland’s passing fell under a wide variety of categories: forward, dropped, behind, hurried, ill-advised, wreckless, out on the full. Three times they managed to combine forward with out on the full in a double whammy.
Even though Ireland had no shortage of ball or territory it was a false dominance. The unforced errors were crippling and for all of Ireland’s pounding, the French defence gave them nothing. Some of the French hits were thunderous, each one acclaimed with a lusty roar from the crowd. The match settled into a sickening pattern: Ireland responded to every cheap French try with another bout of pressure and every time returned from the French line bruised and empty-handed.
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The wonder is that Ireland’s morale survived the shelling. Two more tries directly after half-time put them 40 points in arrears and if the clock was stopped at that moment it would have been a record defeat for Ireland against France. Nobody doubted that the French would break the record at their ease and perhaps set a target that they would never reach again.
In the press conference afterwards the French manager Joe Maso said that when Ireland went 40 points behind they became fearless and it is impossible to argue with that assessment. It was as if they were beyond humiliation, beyond haplessness. For a reckless spell the match assumed the mood of a sevens’ game and all of the probing and surging came from Ireland.
The passes started to stick, the moves which had stuttered and failed in the first half were now coherent and dynamic; the gain-line was no longer a limit, it was a staging post en route to the next phase in the attack. Ireland were rolling. Fearless. Forty points down, 30 points down, 20 points down; cocky now and driving on.
Eddie O’Sullivan overstated the Irish performance. Ten minutes into the second half his head was on the block and voices who have been calling for his head over the past few months would have been joined in a chorus of disaffection. O’Sullivan, though, slipped the noose and his mood was bullish. Just like his team in the last 20 minutes, attack was the best form of defence.
“I don’t think the French played particularly well,” he said. “It’s hard to see where the French played the rugby — we played all the rugby.”
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He went too far. The mistakes that gifted France their tries were borne of incompetence, poor decision-making and a lack of concentration; in a Test match any of those conditions is potentially fatal; a cocktail of all three is certain to kill. Ultimately, it did.
What Ireland showed was strength of mind. Ronan O’Gara was charged down for two of France’s tries, but he was outstanding in the final quarter and his role was pivotal in the comeback. His try was the first in Ireland’s comeback and from then to the finish he scarcely took a wrong option.
Denis Leamy, Paul O’Connell, Brian O’Driscoll, Shane Horgan were immense and two of O’Driscoll’s breaks were equisite. With a handful of matches under his belt since his return from injuy O’Driscoll’s hamstring conceded to exhaustion but as he left the field near the end the home crowd rose to their feet in appreciation.
The mind-bending part is that Ireland could conceivably have snatched it. Geordan Murphy knocked on when O’Driscoll had done the hard work and one more completed pass was all that stood between Ireland and another try. Maso said that France cracked in the last 10 minutes and he believed Ireland would have won if the game had lasted 10 minutes longer. It is hard to argue.
France needed to keep it simple and find touch but Frederick Michalak couldn’t deliver that security and after another miserable afternoon he was replaced with eight minutes left to a cacaphony of cat-calls.
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“When you’re up against world class centres like O’Driscoll and D’Arcy,” said Maso, “you can’t afford to keep on giving them the ball.”
It had come to that. France were hanging on, desperate in the last ditch. They couldn’t dance their way out of trouble and they couldn’t stare Ireland down. They needed to find touch and they couldn’t do that either. Extraordinary.
Laporte didn’t agree with O’Sullivan’s assertion that only one of the French tries was their own doing; he thought they had something to do with two out of the six. It was splitting hairs.
Can Ireland be happy? How can they? They may never play so badly in Paris again and they may never play so well. Neither thought is a consolation.