XV against Ireland

[fivepointer]

France look in ominously good order. I reckon they had another gear available to them yesterday.

[Digby]

If France had another gear available it would have been useful to use it in a 2 point game. France struggled with the set piece but did dominate contact. Faced with all that the French halfbacks had some nice touches but lacked control across the whole

[paddy no 11]

Willemse and Vincent dropped clangers which would have finished the game, they were pretty comfortable, Irish try was out of nothing

[francoisfou]

The French team is still very much "work in progress", but the signs are encouraging.
The lineout was a disappointment as was the tight scrummaging, but loose play was good, with players like Marchand, Baille and Alldritt to the fore.
There were a few moments of offloading that were good to watch, but as Digby says above, there was a lack of control.
Defence wasn't bad with few missed tackles, but Shaun Edwards won't have been happy and he'll be giving his players a hard time in training before the visit of Scotland to paris on the 28th.

[Digby]

Willemse and Vincent dropped clangers which would have finished the game, they were pretty comfortable, Irish try was out of nothing

Was the Willemse dropped clanger the ball at his head? That's harsh if so. I don't actually blame anyone for that, sometimes 2-3 players each make a different call on a particular phase and they just don't remotely sync up, and then you get something like a pass to the head or to nobody which looks awful. What you might want to speak to them about is communication, hard to say the crowd noise made that impossible from the weekend, but even then sometimes things just happen quickly and given you want them to act quickly shrug your shoulders and move on

[Digby]

The French team is still very much "work in progress", but the signs are encouraging.
The lineout was a disappointment as was the tight scrummaging, but loose play was good, with players like Marchand, Baille and Alldritt to the fore.
There were a few moments of offloading that were good to watch, but as Digby says above, there was a lack of control.
Defence wasn't bad with few missed tackles, but Shaun Edwards won't have been happy and he'll be giving his players a hard time in training before the visit of Scotland to paris on the 28th.

The good moments were very good in fairness, and they won, and it's another game Jalibert and Dupont had together. And it's not all on the halves, they didn't drop ball from 15, they didn't lose set piece, they didn't give away a stupid yellow card, and all those show how easy it is to lose momentum in a game you could be doing much better in, but they didn't get it quite right around when to play and they didn't kick with as much composure as you'd like