Six Nations Championship: "I don't pick the team but I'd give him my vote," said Denis Leamy of Jamie Heaslip yesterday.

Leamy is no selector and his point was well made but his enthusiasm for Heaslip's first steps on the St Denis sward probably echoed that of many on the squad, including those who may have lost out in the rejigged backrow, one of the most mobile selected for a long, long time.

While the praise for the number eight, one of last week's experimental successes, was warranted, the thorny issue of how for much of the game Ireland allowed France to do to them what they wanted remains one of the larger question marks after the Irish performance, which needs to be patched up before the crestfallen Scots arrive in less than two weeks with hopes of kickstarting their Six Nations venture.

"When we looked we knew there was space in the French defence," observed Girvan Dempsey yesterday. "We watched the videos and we highlighted the opportunities and recognised the short sides or the mismatches in midfield, the things they were very good at doing to us, but we didn't really do the same things to them.

"We knew the only way to beat France was to attack them. We knew when you go to Paris you can't stand off, you can't look on in awe of them. We had to go after them, attack them and look for those mismatches of backs against forwards."

One of those mismatches was when blindside flanker Leamy was asked to cover across from his position close to the ruck and tried to chase down the speedster Vincent Clerc.

Fullback Dempsey was farther out of the picture but the outcome of a blindside against a winger in a foot race was all too predictable - and perhaps a microcosm of first-half perfection from France.

"As soon as that ball is kicked over my head, I haven't a hope in hell," said a candid Leamy. "All I can do against him is . . . if he is going to pass the ball, I have a chance against him. But as soon as he kicks the ball over my head, unfortunately there is only one winner."

Leamy saw the French scrumhalf Jean-Baptiste Elissalde line up the kick but was committed to holding his position until it was too late.

"Yeah I did see it, but I couldn't leave the defensive line. There was a big-enough blindside, and I think it was possibly myself and one other there. I was in direct opposition to Clerc. But the guy is just so quick. You try and chase back, but there isn't much of a hope."

Leamy is not exclusively a roaming marauder, a ball carrier and a tackling machine; his main task at number six against Scotland will be to organise the front five defensively and take care of things on the blindside. He found the task against France unusually fraught but it is a job Munster have often asked to him to do and with little complaint from Declan Kidney.

"It's fairly technical, but I'll try to explain it," said Leamy. "Off scrums and lineouts, I would normally hold the blindside. I push the slower guys, who are probably John Hayes (laughing). I push the frontrow and the front five inside me, so the idea is to get a backrower out as second-last man in defence, and a winger who is half and half - covering back the field and pushing upfield if needs be.

"So I basically call what defence we're using: whether a softer defence, hard turf-up or blitz defence. I look up and decide what is the best call to make at that time."

Scotland should not ask as many off-beat questions from the Ireland defence as France did. But punters' opinions, swinging wildly from Ireland being a disaster to Ireland being on the cusp of rediscovery, may bring their own surreal pressures.

The probable reality is that Ireland have yet to convince an impatient public.

"As a team, we don't take much heed of it, to be honest with you," observed Dempsey. "If you look at our performance against Italy and our second-half performance against France, it has progressed, it has got better.

"We know we are trying to build, build through this championship and get better and better. We showed what we are capable of.

"We showed it a bit in the second half and that is something we want to kick on from. You know your own opinion of yourself and also your own team-mates."