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A poor third quarter was the main reason for Ireland’s loss to France, but Andrew Conway revealed that at halftime the coaching staff had already identified that something was “a little wrong”.
Andy Farrell’s team trailed 17-13 at halftime with two French attempts coming off Irish errors.
But the visitors enjoyed 65% possession and had a 72% territorial advantage in the first half without ever capitalizing on those stats.
France added 11 points in the first 12 minutes of the second half and were left with 35-27 winners.
The full-time penalty count was 14-7 in Ireland’s favor, which will make the realization that a six-point victory would have been enough to claim the Six Nations title even harder to digest.
“We were probably out of place in the first half,” said Munster wing Conway, who won his 23rd international game last night.
“We did some things right, but our body language was probably not good at times.
“The coaches were watching and they would have had a good view of us, and they know us well enough to feel and think that we are a bit out of place, so that was the message.
“The message was to believe, to enter the second half with a championship at stake, everything to play and only a couple of points, whatever it is.
“So it’s disappointing that that kind of talk has to be said in the environment that we find ourselves in, but that was the reality of where we were and unfortunately we didn’t start.”
France was mathematically still on the hunt for silverware, but needed an unlikely 32-point win to overtake England, whom they had beaten at the start of the championship in February.
Fabien Galthie’s team is on the rise, but that doesn’t make it easy for Conway to digest the loss, knowing that Ireland made life difficult in Paris.
He said: “We know the caliber of the players we are playing against and we know that if we give them an easy ball … then they punish you, and that’s the level you’re at.
“So that’s probably the most disappointing thing, actually, cases like that where you don’t necessarily care where you make it difficult for teams, where they get into the corner, or there’s a piece of magic where you say, ‘fair to play with you’.
“But it’s when you don’t give your best when you play with some of the best teams in the world and they will punish you like they did.”
It’s the second season in a row that Ireland has entered the final round with a chance to win the title only to not shoot when the occasion demands it most.
That fact, coupled with the shape of the Six Nations’ last two losses to England and the World Cup loss to New Zealand, seems to suggest that there is a widening gulf between Ireland and the current leaders.
The inability to produce under pressure stands in stark contrast to 2018 when Ireland claimed the Grand Slam, a series win in Australia and a win over New Zealand.
When asked about Ireland’s mistakes that led to more mistakes and if that affected his thinking, the 29-year-old said: “They are aggravating mistakes and that’s backing up one negative after another negative and in the same way wishes put a positive on top of a positive over positive and get in position to score.
“It’s easy to say that we shouldn’t miss a touch, mess up a lineout or have precision out there. It’s easy for me to say, but the reality is that we are in a testing environment and things are going wrong.
“We want to work as hard as we can during the week and prepare for that not to happen. But it does happen and it is quite disappointing for us that it happened in such an important match with such a great opportunity for us.”
“We have to come together and keep trying to improve together. There will be some ups in the future, but there will also be downs.
“We are at the beginning of Faz’s reign, we have a great group of guys and we feel like we have a great team to carry on.
“So we will stick together and look forward to a great new rugby month and see what we can do.”
Ireland’s next game will be in the Fall Nations Cup against Wales in Dublin on Friday the week.
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