Caelan Doris alludes to maybe the one silver lining after France flop

Caelan Doris pointed to Ireland’s bench as a rare positive to cling to after Thursday night’s 36-14 defeat to France at the Stade de France, with the replacements effectively pulling off a damage limitation exercise in the second forty.

Ireland were 22-0 down at the break and trailed 29-0 early in the second half before the bench provided late momentum.

With France in complete control and Ireland staring down the barrel of a hiding, the replacements changed the mood. Nick Timoney’s try finally put points on the board for Ireland and, three minutes later, Michael Milne powered over for his first international try.

Ronan Kelleher and Finlay Bealham tightened things up, while James Ryan, Jack Conan and Jack Crowley added stability and intent as Ireland produced their best spell in the final quarter, even if it never looked like a comeback was on the cards.

“I think the bench made a good impact,” Doris said. “Faz [Andy Farrell] alluded to it there, there was some good resolve in the second half, but we don’t want to be a team that’s chasing, you know what I mean? We left ourselves too big a mountain to climb.

“That’s down to, I guess, some passiveness in D, not being connected, not being present on occasions. Allowing them to flourish… keeping the ball alive in attack.”

Doris said Andy Farrell set the tone in the dressing room afterwards, with focus quickly switching to next week’s trip to Italy.

“It was Faz who mainly spoke about coming back into work with an intention,” he said. “It doesn’t start at zero. Some good lessons learned in that. There was a lot of good stuff in the prep. We’re going to have to have a deep dive into how we can make that better, but there’s a lot of good stuff in it as well.”

It was a dark night for Ireland statistically, not least from a defensive point, with the visitors missing close to one in three tackle attempts.