'We owe them one': How Ireland are approaching quarter-final replay with France

Pauline Bourdon Sansus knew just how important the defensive set was. As rain drenched Sandy Park, Ireland pounded French lines in an all-out effort to get one more score. They were 13-0 up but France would have the wind, and rain, at their backs for the second half. One more score. Ireland just needed one more.

Ireland pressed, pushed and probed for 35 phases, over five exhausting minutes. France were down to 14 players after Manaé Feleu had brought down a rolling Irish maul that had ploughed from the 22-metre line and rumbled agonisingly close to the tryline. France were in desperation mode. They dug in, made every tackle count and, on more than one occasion, drove Ireland back.

With the clock on 47:02, Aoife Wafer lobbed an offload meant for Eve Higgins. Joanna Grisez got a hand to it. Bourdon Sansus retrieved the ball from a resulting ruck, Morgane Bourgeois dispatched it into the stands and the siege was ended. Bourdon Sansus patted Ireland’s Dannah O’Brien on the head, but there was little sympathy there. She let out a roar and France jogged to the changing rooms. They were still in the fight.

“The end of the first half,” Ireland head coach Scott Bemand would later reflect, “we understood the potential ramifications in that. We had a points tally in our head that we thought we’d need to get to.”

From an Irish perspective, failing to add to that 13-point lead and the controversial final lineout are the two crucial moments that linger. There was also the matter of two French players that, it was later decided by an independent disciplinary committee, should have been red-carded. Aoife Wafer, and Ireland captain Amee Leigh Costigan, signalled to referee Aimee Barrett-Theron that the flanker had been bitten by French back-row, Axelle Berthoumieu.

TV footage, at the time, looked dreadful but the match officials opted to defer judgement until a later date. To make matters worse, Feleu – already on a yellow card – went unpunished for a shoulder-to-head tackle on Irish scrum-half, Aoibheann O’Reilly, with a minute to go.

The same committee would later find that the back five forward should have seen red. She was banned for three matches. Berthoumieu copped a nine-week ban for that dental impression on Wafer’s forearm.

To make matters even worse, with a cherry on top, it was Feleu’s swipe at the lineout throw of Cliodhna Moloney-MacDonald that deviated it away from Ruth Campbell’s grasp right at the death. Ireland wanted a knock-on, at least, or a penalty.

Barrett-Theron let it slide. Seconds later, she whistled for a knock-on by Assia Khalfaoui and followed with a shrill for full-time.

The agony and heartbreak of Exeter, seven months ago, sets the stage for the pick of the Round 3 action at this year’s Guinness Women’s Six Nations. From the moment that Women’s Rugby World Cup quarter-final was consigned to the record books, on 14 September 2025, Ireland have had another date circled bright red on their calendar. Saturday 25 April 2026 at Stade Marcel Michelin, Clermont.

Even before the championship commenced, this was the game Ireland were targeting.

Back in December, I caught up with Wafer on a flying visit from London to Dublin. “That defeat does linger,” she admitted. “To be completely honest with you, I probably still am not over it.

“It’s a game that I don’t think I’ll ever be over, to be fair. Maybe if you ask me in 10 years, I’ll probably tell you I am over it. But, right now, yeah, it still hurts. Even up until that lineout, we knew Dannah would get it to the corner because she’s got an excellent boot. We knew that we had a maul for a weapon and we knew all we had to do was get it into the maul and we’d score. And then the hand comes in [from Feleu] and, all of a sudden, the game is done.

“We had so much belief and confidence in our group that we were going to do it, because we knew we could. We knew we had the players to do it. We knew we had the staff to do it. We knew we had the country behind us. But, at the end of the day, we still lost the game.

“I don’t think it’s any one moment… in the lead-up to half-time, it would’ve helped to get another score. There were so many moments in the game that swung it, but that stand from France did give them back momentum. Now, we did wrestle that momentum back but there were points where we just couldn’t capitalise on it. It definitely still lingers and it hurts.”

Womens Six Nations

P

W

L

D

PF

PA

PD

BP T

BP-7

BP

Total

1

England Women

2

2

0

0

10

2

France Women

2

2

0

0

10

3

Ireland Women

2

1

1

0

5

4

Scotland Women

2

1

1

0

4

5

Wales Women

2

0

2

0

1

6

Italy Women

2

0

2

0

1

In late March, before the Championship got underway, Ireland back-row Brittany Hogan told Off The Ball, “France know a vendetta is coming towards them. They know an Irish team is going to come hard at them, and try right those wrongs that happened in the quarter finals.”

Ireland felt they had taken too long to get motoring in their Women’s Six Nations opener against England, falling 28-0 behind before they landed some punches, and scores. Against Italy, last weekend, they delivered a superb performance. Béibhinn Parsons raced in a first-half hat-trick, while Wafer and Erin King, Ireland’s new captain, got back to their marauding best. Less than an hour after that game wrapped, in Galway, King sat in the revamped main stand of Dexcom Stadium and teed up the trip to France.

“I guess we do kind of owe them one,” she declared. “We are raring to go against them.”

“We’d be lying if we said it wasn’t a bit of a revenge game,” King added. “We’re that little bit more eager because of that. We showed in that game what we’re capable of and that we are able to compete with the top four in the world, and break into that top two of Six Nations. So, it’d be great to do it and put our talk into action.”

“We owe them one.” That was what Wafer proclaimed to the BBC, roughly around the same time King was doing her post-match press conference.

As for Bemand, who brings in Dorothy Wall for Ruth Campbell in the only starting XV change, going over to France ‘is one of the ultimate tests’.

“We’ve got to go over there and we’ve got to take our best game with us,” he said. “We’ve got to train for that this week, but we’re developing a group that becomes more experienced as we go. So, is it this year? Could be. Why not? We get our best game out there and we believe we’ve got the characters and the firepower in the group to do that.”

On Thursday, after naming his Ireland match-day squad, Bemand expanded on what it may take to end a nine-year wait to topple the French. He also spoke about the likes of King, Wafer and Hogan being so candid about their quest for vengeance.

“I think it’s okay to talk about winning stuff,” he commented. “What we’re seeing is a group that is maturing. We’ve all spoken about this being a young group with not much experience, but this group is now becoming more experienced.

“It hasn’t always been perfect on the pitch, but the general feeling is that we go about our work, our process, understand where we are trying to get to and, in trying to achieve that, we train hard.”

“Against England,” Bemand added, “we let them get off to a start that we didn’t want. In France’s two games, they’ve only got going in the second half. So, for us, the ability to get a start is going to be really important.

“We know France are a different entity over there. They are going to have a full stadium behind them. We know it’s the toughest place to go, but we know what we’ve got to do.”

Funnily enough, though, there was only one aspect of the match build-up that Bemand veered away from some of his senior stars.

“It’s not about revenge,” he insisted. “It’s about the next game.”

Someone should inform the Ireland players.