Six Nations/France v Ireland Reaction: Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. It's not a mantra beloved of sportspeople, who prefer, when they are pushed and can find no other refuge, the bolthole of group responsibility.

Geordan Murphy stood behind a two-and-a-half-foot-high partition here on Saturday, all that separated him from a phalanx of microphones and tape-recorders, and spoke with candour.

Alone he stood as he tried to rake through the embers of a remarkable match in Paris, one that for him embraced the extremes in emotion. In the first half he had endured a personal nightmare that threatened to shred his confidence but he recovered self-respect with a performance in the final half hour more fitting his talents.

"We went out and wanted to play an expansive game and take them on. Anything that could go wrong went wrong in the first half. I personally made a few mistakes that cost us points, things that I wouldn't usually expect to do.

"When I threw that intercept 25 minutes into the first half I was praying for the ground to open up and swallow me. We came in at half-time and Eddie (O'Sullivan) was very calm. He said, 'We have had one block-down, one intercept and one fumble." He focused on the fact that we hadn't done a whole lot wrong but had to stop giving gifts.

"He was quite happy with what we were trying to do. He emphasised that Irish teams in the past had let their heads drop, been beaten out the gate. He said I don't want you to do that. They came out and scored the first try but still the heads didn't drop. It just started to click for us.

"There were a lot of Irish guys dead on their feet (at the end) but they (France) were even more so, knackered. We kept coming at them. If we had cut out one or two errors we could have beaten them."

Ludicrous at it may seem in the context of the first 50 minutes or so, there was a point when the Irish players saw not the train in the tunnel but the light at the end of it.

Murphy admitted: "(With) 10 minutes to go we were 12 points down and I thought we could nick it. The French guys were knackered and we were making line breaks every time we got one or two phases, cutting through them.

"I knew it was a long shot. The French though were making mistakes, kicking ball out. (When you consider) a French team, two scores up in the Stade de France and they didn't want to play. There were so many quality performances out there, notably the Irish pack.

"I thought the guys were fantastic. One or two missed lineouts, one or two dodgy scrums, but on the whole the Irish eight worked harder than any pack I have seen. It's disappointing for a back to say that we let them down a little bit."

The squeamish should look away now as the fullback sifts through the litany of first-half errors.

"The first try was a couple of missed tackles, one of them by me. The second try was from a quick drop-out. (Brian) O'Driscoll was down and I thought play was going to be stopped. We were out of position. I had to trek across the field and (Freddie) Michalak made a lot of ground up on Leams (Denis Leamy) so I went to block Michalak, whom I thought was going to throw his foot on the ball. It squirted out. Third try (was) a block-down.

"(For the next) I'm not sure who was on my immediate right but I saw a couple of French defenders coming up and O'Driscoll in midfield. I don't think it was too bad of a pass. I didn't see him (Cedric Heymans) coming, so he must have been hidden by a couple of our players. The pass wasn't too shabby but he (the French defender) read it like a book.

"Shane (Horgan) said to Brian, 'He's coming, try and get it,' but Brian couldn't readjust.

"After the intercept I knew how the Christians in the coliseum felt. I was down. If there had been a hole I would have jumped into it. I had a poor first half and I will hold my hand up about it but I wasn't going to let my head drop and say, that's me. I wanted to come back and make an impact."

That he did but Ireland's revival ultimately came up short.

"It's no consolation in some respects but we played very well in the second half."