Around half-past-six it was all a little quiet in the Stade de France, the rapt crowd of 80,000 seemed to be too nervous to sing or scream or shout any more for a game they thought they had seen their team win once, twice, three times already. Ireland never actually held the lead, but they never stopped chasing it either. Joey Carbery had just kicked a penalty to cut three out of France’s six-point lead. They could have gone for the corner, they had scored twice from attacking lineouts already, but they were confident, had all the ball, and, like everyone watching, felt sure there was one twist left in this dizzy game.
France’s head coach, Fabien Galthié, made a point of telling his squad all about how Ireland’s captain, James Ryan, had promised he and his team were going to hush the fans at Stade de France the day before the game. And now, for a moment at least, Ireland had.
And then, inevitably, 10, 20, 30, 40 and who knows how many more thousand launched into La Marseillaise as Gaël Fickou launched a chip over the Irish line, raced through, gathered it in and set France pouring forward again into the Irish 22. The move stopped short but the ball went wide to Melvyn Jaminet, who cut over the line, trailing Dan Sheehan from his shoulders like a scarf in the wind. Jaminet thought he had scored. So did everyone else. But the referee, Angus Gardner, called for the TMO, who ruled that the ball had been held up after all. The Irish had conceded a penalty, though, somewhere in all the chaos. Jaminet kicked it. That made it 30-24, which was how it finished.
“Whatever people say,” Galthié said afterwards when he was asked about Ryan’s remark, “what matters is what happens on the pitch.”
It had promised to be one of the great games, and it was, not least because, way back at the beginning, when France went 10-0 up before the late-comers had even made their seats, it looked as if it was going to be a blow-out.
It took just over a minute to start going wrong. Ireland were caught flat-footed by a quick lineout and soon after it France’s gargantuan prop Uini Atonio was barrelling up the midfield. It took three men to stop him and that left a gap for Romain Ntamack, who slipped through and flicked the ball back inside to Antoine Dupont, who raced through to score.
It got worse when France broke downfield, then won a penalty – the first of many – when an Irish ball carrier was done for holding on to the ball at the breakdown. The Irish, who did not concede one penalty in the first half when they beat Wales last week, gave up seven in the first half here. Andy Farrell thought there was something fishy about it. “We’ll have to analyse the legality of the French defensive breakdowns,” Ireland’s head coach said, “but all credit to them, they were very vigorous in that department.”
Soon enough, though, Ireland had scored a startling try of their own. Jaminet was hanging back on his heels waiting for the restart. Mack Hansen sprinted full tilt, leapt, grabbed the ball, swerved, landed and raced away into the wide-open space behind Jaminet, who was left staring after him like a man who had just watched his bus race past without braking. That made it 10-7.
Things settled down for a stretch after that. But the French began to assert themselves as the half went on. They were that much sharper when they had the ball, and that much more brutal when they didn’t. And while they did not cleave Ireland open again, they started to kill them by a thousand cuts instead. Jaminet kicked a second penalty after another offence at the breakdown, a third after a superb break down the right by Damian Penaud, and a fourth right before half-time, after France had destroyed the Irish scrum. He added a fifth right after the break, for an off-side this time. Which made it 22-7.
Jaminet had just about finished banging in the last nail in, then, when Ireland burst back into life. Josh van der Flier scored one try off a rolling maul, and moments later, Gibson-Park got another when he spotted a sliver of a gap in front of him as he picked the ball up off the floor. It was more than he needed, and since he scored right under the posts, another conversion followed. All of a sudden there was only one point in it.
It did not stay like that long, either. Ireland were turned over off the back of a defensive lineout on their own try-line, and from it Atonio ploughed through tacklers towards the try-line. They stopped him, but not Cyril Baille, who was following right behind, and scored the try that set up that six-point lead.
Even then, the Irish weren’t done. They kept fighting right to the finish. “It shows the spirit and character of our side that we were still in with a chance at the end,” said Farrell. “A lot of teams would get taken advantage of when they’re 22-7 down in Paris, a lot of teams would get tipped over the edge, but that wasn’t the case with us.” They were beaten, and badly bruised too, but unbowed.
