WHILE THERE WERE a number of positives to take out of the game, Ireland head coach Scott Bemand admitted this afternoon’s opening round defeat to France in the Women’s Six Nations was one that potentially got away from his side.

Despite facing a 17-5 interval deficit at Kingspan Stadium in Belfast – having conceded 14 unanswered points in the opening quarter – Ireland’s challenge gained fresh impetus when French inside centre Gabrielle Vernier was issued with a 20-minute red card for making head contact with her opposite number Eve Higgins.

Subsequent tries from Neve Jones and Aoife Wafer (adding to her own first half five-pointer) reduced the gap to two points and had Ireland within sight of their first victory over France since the 2017 Six Nations Championship. Yet having been restored to their full compliment just before Wafer’s 67th minute try, France rallied late on to claim a hard-earned 27-15 win.

“We were just talking at the end there and the narrative with the group. We don’t want to be noble losers. We don’t want to put up a good fist of it against a good France team. With ten minutes to go, we felt we could go on and win. We’re a young group still. They’ve got to be in those positions,” Bemand remarked in a post-match press conference at the Ravenhill venue.

“We’ve had some experience. You look at the end of the New Zealand game in WXV 1, where we’re able to come back and win it. Coming out of this we said, against these Tier One Nations and World Cup contenders, we thought it would come down to the last 20 minutes.

“You’re going to need to have that composure. Not belief really, just calmness of thought that you can execute where you want to be on the pitch. How you get there and then you take your opportunities. So it does feel like we’ve lost a game we could have been in and I think them scoring at the end takes the scoreboard away a little bit.

“So we can rue losing bonus points or what have you, but I think probably as a group we’re more disappointed that we weren’t fighting in their ‘22’ to win a game.”

Although Amee-Leigh Costigan (nee Murphy Crowe) led out the team from the start, squad captain Edel McMahon was introduced to the action as part of a quadruple substitution in the 56th minute and was on media duties in the aftermath of the game.

The Clare native acknowledged she was experiencing ‘mixed emotions’ in the minutes that followed the contest. This is understandable given Ireland ultimately fell to their eighth consecutive reversal at the hands of France and yet were very much in the reckoning for a major scalp during a frantic second half.

“There is mixed emotions there. When the whistle went and you looked around, people were disappointed. It was probably a game we were in and we knew we could compete in and actually win. That’s really satisfying to see that’s where we’re at as a squad,” McMahon said.

“We’re not complacent with ‘oh it looked alright or oh we competed.’ We’re actually there to win games. There’s an element of frustration with that. But on the flip side of it, I’m extremely proud of the girls because we set out in this campaign to be hard to beat. Set out in this campaign to fire shots and compete with Tier One Nations. I think we did that today.

“There are huge positives. This group is so young. To be 0-14 down and have the belief to come back, that is massive and not something that you can teach in a day. That’s been building in this squad, so I’m massively proud of that.”

Daire Walsh