[2025 Six Nations] Ireland vs France - 8/3/25

[Ragey Erasmus]

HAHAHAHA x99
From you, this is f***n' hilarious. Open the other eye. You might see that this Ireland team aren't even halfway as good as they think they are.
Scraped past a misfiring England. Beat Scotland who didn't fire a shot. Taken to the wire by the woodenspooners and taken to the cleaners by France.
Ireland were poor. And that is their level.

Where is this coming from? Ireland have come down from their peak but they are still a very good side. Few teams maintain that level of performance and consistency for that long. They are having a bit of a bad patch but their bad patch is still good enough to have put them in contention for the ***le...

 

[Lé Ddanno]

HAHAHAHA x99
From you, this is f***n' hilarious. Open the other eye. You might see that this Ireland team aren't even halfway as good as they think they are.
Scraped past a misfiring England. Beat Scotland who didn't fire a shot. Taken to the wire by the woodenspooners and taken to the cleaners by France.
Ireland were poor. And that is their level.

There's some weird **** floating around here lately

 

[pagliaccio_euforico]

It's less Ireland is being favored and more that the top teams know refs don't want to blow their whistle so they take the **** with slowing the ball down.

 

[TW27BA]

Undoubtably the game of the weekend, every real rugby fan should just admire the way France went about this game. They were superb. Didn't falter after losing talisman Dupont, who incidentally was very unlucky. I highly doubt Beirne meant to cause that injury.
Ireland really missed Lowe and Hansen out wide. The two wingers in their place were both pretty poor. Prendergast will have better days, but he's young and will will remember that match. How he responds will be interesting. Looks like he needs to spend summer in the gym bulking up.
Rare for the Irish to be bullied in the pack but they were.
I still can't believe England beat this French side just a few weeks ago.

 

[saulan]

Edit: Forgot that we're all arrogant and unlikeable fans now which is a shame because we were just the best craic when we were ****.

 

[OllyM97]

Undoubtably the game of the weekend, every real rugby fan should just admire the way France went about this game. They were superb. Didn't falter after losing talisman Dupont, who incidentally was very unlucky. I highly doubt Beirne meant to cause that injury.
Ireland really missed Lowe and Hansen out wide. The two wingers in their place were both pretty poor. Prendergast will have better days, but he's young and will will remember that match. How he responds will be interesting. Looks like he needs to spend summer in the gym bulking up.
Rare for the Irish to be bullied in the pack but they were.
I still can't believe England beat this French side just a few weeks ago.

I'm sure a lot of my fellow English posters will disagree with this but, if we get 5 points against Wales, I'll be cheering for France against Scotland - I don't want us to scabbily sneak a Championship. We'd be one of the least deserving Champions of the 6N era. It would cover over so many cracks in this team and English rugby as a whole. Worst of all, it would validate Borthwick's style of play.

 

[g6mcg]

It's less Ireland is being favored and more that the top teams know refs don't want to blow their whistle so they take the **** with slowing the ball down.

Terrible coaching from the non-top teams if that were the case! Pushing the rules as far as you can is one of the key skills in rugby.

 

[Lé Ddanno]

Terrible coaching from the non-top teams if that were the case! Pushing the rules as far as you can is one of the key skills in rugby.

Why does everyone mispell "cheating like absolute ********"

 

[O’Doyle Rules]

Got humbled today when someone told me Ntamack is 25. Sam P isn't that young…pretty sure Ntamack was the business at 22.

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

I'm sure a lot of my fellow English posters will disagree with this but, if we get 5 points against Wales, I'll be cheering for France against Scotland - I don't want us to scabbily sneak a Championship. We'd be one of the least deserving Champions of the 6N era. It would cover over so many cracks in this team and English rugby as a whole. Worst of all, it would validate Borthwick's style of play.

Jam slam 2: Electric Boogaloo

 

[Half Pint]

I'm sure a lot of my fellow English posters will disagree with this but, if we get 5 points against Wales, I'll be cheering for France against Scotland - I don't want us to scabbily sneak a Championship. We'd be one of the least deserving Champions of the 6N era. It would cover over so many cracks in this team and English rugby as a whole. Worst of all, it would validate Borthwick's style of play.

I wanted to disagree, but actually that's a good point. Going into the tourny France and Ireland were comfortably the best two sides, and I've not seen any great leaps forwards from anyone else.
It would take a strange set of circs for England to walk away with a 6N ti*tle, and whilst it would be brilliant and I could point and laugh all day long, it would be the least deserved trophy in sporting history, and it would cement another WC-cycle of England mediocrity.

 

[Saintjay]

I wanted to disagree, but actually that's a good point. Going into the tourny France and Ireland were comfortably the best two sides, and I've not seen any great leaps forwards from anyone else.
It would take a strange set of circs for England to walk away with a 6N ti*tle, and whilst it would be brilliant and I could point and laugh all day long, it would be the least deserved trophy in sporting history, and it would cement another WC-cycle of England mediocrity.

Least deserved I'd go with Saracens, Lance Armstrong and the majority of sprinting medals in the 80's.

I'd rather win and win ugly than lose. Until they awards bonus points for style and artistic merit that is.

England are in this position as well because Ireland and France didn't win the games they needed too. That's not Borthwicks fault. Heard someone say against better teams it's about the result. Lesser about the performance which I some what agree with

 

[Leonormous Boozer]

Least deserved I'd go with Saracens, Lance Armstrong and the majority of sprinting medals in the 80's.

I'd rather win and win ugly than lose. Until they awards bonus points for style and artistic merit that is.

England are in this position as well because Ireland and France didn't win the games they needed too. That's not Borthwicks fault. Heard someone say against better teams it's about the result. Lesser about the performance which I some what agree with

If England win it'll be deserved. The 6n is a sprint and any misstep has huge consequences. The last 10mins of Ireland v England in r1 will, in all liklihood, decide 2nd place.

I don't think any current Ireland team could have beaten France on Saturday but looking at the table I can't help but think we've missed Farrell massively. I think we deny England a BP and get at least 1 more between the Wales and France games with him around, it's mostly been dicipline issues which haven't been a feature of his coaching. Probably still only amounts to 2nd place but the 1.3m loss between coming 2nd and 3rd will hurt the IRFU.

 

[AngloScotsHybrid]

I seem to have watched a different game to everybody else on Saturday. I saw Ireland dominate for the first 20 minutes but couldn't get the ball over the try line. Then Ireland got 2 yellow cards and conceded tries whilst they were down to 14 men. The first yellow card was deserved but the Nash one was unlucky and wouldn't have been given 3 years ago. How low is a tackler supposed to go.
France scored a lucky interception try though you could blame Prendergast for throwing the pass.
When Ireland got their full compliment of players back they came into the game again towards the end. I don't think they were outclassed by France at all.

 

[IT157]

I seem to have watched a different game to everybody else on Saturday. I saw Ireland dominate for the first 20 minutes but couldn't get the ball over the try line. Then Ireland got 2 yellow cards and conceded tries whilst they were down to 14 men. The first yellow card was deserved but the Nash one was unlucky and wouldn't have been given 3 years ago. How low is a tackler supposed to go.
France scored a lucky interception try though you could blame Prendergast for throwing the pass.
When Ireland got their full compliment of players back they came into the game again towards the end. I don't think they were outclassed by France at all.

Valid points.

The demise of Ireland is being overexaggerated.

It was only last year when Ireland put France to the sword in France.

 

[Leonormous Boozer]

We've had 40 mins with 14 this championship and the score in that time is 0-45. 27-0 and 27-22 when level in Welsh and French games.

Don't think you can carry Prendo in D with a man down. Needs to be addressed at both player and selection level really. I think you let Prendo see off the championship, it was clearly given to him, and then proceed with Crowley until his defence gets to an adequate level.

 

[OllyM97]

I seem to have watched a different game to everybody else on Saturday. I saw Ireland dominate for the first 20 minutes but couldn't get the ball over the try line. Then Ireland got 2 yellow cards and conceded tries whilst they were down to 14 men. The first yellow card was deserved but the Nash one was unlucky and wouldn't have been given 3 years ago. How low is a tackler supposed to go.
France scored a lucky interception try though you could blame Prendergast for throwing the pass.
When Ireland got their full compliment of players back they came into the game again towards the end. I don't think they were outclassed by France at all.

You have a very weird definition of what being "outclassed" means. Whichever way you look at it Ireland were outclassed on the day. Ireland dominated the first 20 minutes and the last 8 but in-between times it was all France. Conceding 42 points and 5 tries at home is an absolute shellacking, it was not a close game. The team in Blue were comfortably superior. Ireland only came back a bit at the end because France had it in the bag and they had 14 men for the last few minutes. Ireland are not a busted flush by any means, but i don't think are at the level of France when both teams have their top teams out. France are a better team than Ireland.

 

[Lé Ddanno]

Which means England are a better team than France but Ireland are a better team than England

 

[Jimbo]

At the very top just being off the pace by a few % makes a huge difference so does momentum, France's defence in the first 15 minutes probably determined the outcome of the game, needs to be remembered that they did have a couple of backline players missing as well as their coach, sometimes the energy levels and physicality levels just aren't where they need to be, I think this was partly the case for Ireland on Saturday as was for France in the same fixture last year. Either way I don't expect either teams to exit top 4 any time soon.