SKIPPER PAUL O’CONNELL was left ruing a missed opportunity for Ireland to win for the first time in Paris since 2000.
Declan Kidney’s men were reeled in by France in the second half, ultimately drawing 17-17 in their RBS 6 Nations match at the Stade de France.
“[Y]eah we left it behind us a little bit out there,” the Munster man told RTÉ afterwards.
“We needed to come out and get scores on the board but obviously they’re a good side as well and they were going to come out all guns blazing as well. So the second half-performance was very frustrating.
“Yeah, we came close but disappointing. Very disappointing second-half perfomance from us. A few mistakes, you know we failed to retain the ball a little bit. The penalty count was heavily weighted against us as well which was very frustrating, very annoying.
Asked by Clare McNamara if the stalemate was a missed opportunity, the second-row agreed.
“Yeah major disappointment. We’re playing some good rugby at times and we’re good enough to win these games so it’s very frustrating that we didn’t close it out,” he said.
“It was a good performance. Very accurate defensively, we scored an excellent try off Tommy and then Tommy obviously sniped early on to get a good intercept try, so we put ourselves in a great position and unfortunately we didn’t capitalise.”
Ireland will now turn their attentions to their penultimate game of their championship, against Scotland in Dublin on Saturday. O’Connell insists however that the short preparation time is not a major issue for the squad.
“We’re well used to six-day turnarounds. We do it all the time with our provinces we’re all professional players, we all have our routines. So we’ll recover well over the next few days and we’re looking forward to getting back and playing in the Aviva,” he added.
