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'You can see it in the players' faces...We're gutted, we're heartbroken'
By Nathan Johns
Ireland head coach Scott Bemand expressed pride in his side’s performance after a narrow 18-13 World Cup quarter-final defeat to France.
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After losing 40-0 to New Zealand last week, Ireland rebounded to open up a 13-0 lead over their Six Nations rivals at Sandy Park. With weather conditions favouring the side with the wind at their back, Ireland dominated possession and territory to build scoreboard pressure.
At half-time, the key question was whether that lead would be enough once France got their go playing with the wind. Ultimately, Ireland failed to hold out, Joanna Grisez capitalising with a winning score late in the second half, one which came off the back of a French defensive set inside their own 22.
“I’m really proud, really proud of the group and where they’ve come from in the last two years,” said Bemand. “It was a tough Test match today, the occasion – you think a year ago, that group might have felt the occasion more but I could see it in the eyes of the players when they stepped off the bus…
“The crowd was singing the Field of Athenry and our group don’t get daunted by that any more. They get excited by it.
“It was a tough Test match in terms of conditions, we tried to play the conditions really, really well. There were some bits that worked, some bits put us under pressure.
“And with a young group, we’ve always been talking about the next four-year cycle as well. We know that this group is going to stick together, and this group’s going to get better and better.”
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“That’s what I asked from the girls at the start of the game, ‘Don’t let the moment pass you by, leave everything you can out there,’” said Ireland captain Sam Monaghan. “I truly believe we did.
“You can see it in the players’ faces, they are heartbroken. But it’s such a proud dressing room. I couldn’t ask for more from them. We gave it all, we brought them to 90 minutes probably in the end with the five minutes from the first half, but I’m extremely proud of this group.
“It is a young group, as Scott said. Only one player out of 32 has experienced a World Cup before. If you do look back two years ago, we were competing in WXV3, and we were very, very close to winning a World Cup quarter-final there.
“We’re gutted, we’re heartbroken. We know we could have had that game, but we’ll hold our heads high, rebuild and go again.”
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Ireland will be left to regret an inability to capitalise on chances inside the 22 throughout the contest. They came close to the French line 13 times but only scored 13 points, whereas France crossed the whitewash on each of the two occasions they entered the 22.
One passage just before half-time stands out in particular, Ireland going through more than 30 phases while France had a player in the bin, only to fail to add to their lead. “That point, we felt that could be fairly pivotal,” acknowledged Bemand. “We thought it was a three-score wind and we needed to take advantage of that.
“It’s a significant moment but we created moments in the second half so it isn’t based on that in isolation. But when you start to build pressure, you need to be able to take your scores.
“Early in the competition – against Japan and Spain – we had quite a good record of getting into the opposition 22 and coming up with points. Last week we found that a little bit harder against New Zealand so we put some practice into that this week.
“France are a good team. They’re full of big athletes. They’re strong and in the conditions they managed to get a little bit of pressure on our first pass.
“We’ll go back and review it. Of course we will. We’ll take the learnings of how we get on top of teams and how to close out points when we get into their 22.”
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