RUGBY SIX NATIONS CHAMPIONSHIP:ONE THAT got away, and no doubt about it. The private and collective sense of self-recrimination in the home dressingroom would have been so strong in the air you could probably have bitten into it.

From an Irish perspective, there was courage, physical intensity and ambition aplenty, but this was a slightly maddening defeat, and so a credible chance of a Grand Slam – or at any rate a shot at one – has been forfeited.

Quelle domage.

Despite the fillip of an early try, despite ultimately outscoring a French side by three tries to one, and laying much of the platform for a victory, Ireland lost an eminently winnable match 25-22. Regrets? Ireland will have a few, in both tactical approach and in execution, and again in discipline.

Such was the French invasion La Marseillaise has possibly never been sung so lustfully hereabouts, and at the end they were the ones in full voice as well, but this was not down to anything resembling a vintage French performance.

Their back play was much easier on the eye, though they threatened more than they delivered, while they kicked with more purpose and challenged brilliantly in the air, made better use of a better bench, conceded fewer penalties and made fewer mistakes. That was enough.

At the end, France were hanging on for dear life and indebted to a knock-on by Seán Cronin, still cold after being introduced only two minutes beforehand, after Maxime Medard had failed to gather a kick ahead by Keith Earls.

“Yeah, we had a chance,” reflected Brian O’Driscoll, ruefully, while also suffering a sore neck. “Three minutes to go, down in their green zone, 10 yards from the line; they were scrambling and we coughed up the ball. I thought we were going to do to them what they did to us four years ago. We coughed up ball too easily.

“The big thing is that when we scored tries, we took them through a number of phases. When you turn it over after three or four it is so difficult to get any momentum. The chance was definitely there for us to take it and we didn’t. That is a bitter enough pill to swallow.”

Agreeing with the view that this was an opportunity lost, coach Declan Kidney commented: “In terms of opportunities taken, we took three of our tries, maybe one towards the end might have got away; out of jail with that one.

“We don’t need to hide behind that, we know we had too many turnovers. We had three tries to one and we still lost the match. We’ll have to take a look at the penalties and see which ones are under our control. We need to get those things right.”

Compounding the 14 errors they were credited with in Rome, the official match stats gave Ireland another 17 errors yesterday.

“They’re uncharacteristic but there is a big step up between Test rugby and Heineken Cup and Magners League level,” said Kidney. “What we need to do is to keep playing this way and get used to it at Test level. Because I believe it is the right way forward for us. There is no point in crawling away and trying to play a damage limitation game; that won’t get us anywhere. It’s not going to win us anything at the end of the day. We need to get better at doing what we are going.”

Yet it’s a fine line and Ireland aren’t getting it right. Hurtling ahead with their ball-in-hand game, Ireland often eschewed their kicking game and with it territory. An example of Ireland’s ambitious (over-ambitious?) game management came after Fergus McFadden’s fifth-minute, converted try.

When Damien Traille horribly miscued the restart, Ireland had a scrum on halfway. Manna from heaven. A time to press home the early advantage, put some doubt in the away-day French psyche.

Scrum ball on halfway is effectively a free kick to the corner, but Jonny Sexton only kicked once in the first half and, instead, Ireland opted for a strike move, with Tomás O’Leary wrapping around O’Driscoll. The scrumhalf couldn’t pull in O’Driscoll’s behind-the-back pass one-handed.

Cue a French scrum, penalty, lineout drive and several phases before another penalty which Morgan Parra nailed. It set the tone.

As for affording sharpshooters like Parra and Dimitri Yachvili seven penalties at goal, Kidney agreed: “It is way too much. It shows where the game was played just over the wrong side of the halfway line from our point of view. You have to look at the time the penalties came our way.

“We need to take a look at conceding less. Whereas we probably got the ball 50 per cent of the time, same as they did, we have to acknowledge the fact that we gave it back to them a lot easier than they gave it to us.”

Re-enforcing the view that France had been eminently beatable here, it transpired there were plenty of recriminations in the away dressingroom too.

Their coach, Marc Lievremont, had reacted furiously to the performance by Les Bleus, and was so upset he had shouted at his players loudly before emerging for the post-match press conference still red-faced.

While “delighted” with the win, he said his team suffered physically, made wrong decisions and mistakes.

While the immense Thierry Dusautoir gave his team five out of 10 for their performance, if 10 out of 10 for spirit, Lievremont suggested the performance merited no more than four out of 10.

Looking ahead to their next match at Twickenham on Saturday week, he also admitted: “England, as a team, are very much ahead of everyone else at the moment, and it would seem that the other five teams are performing at a much lower level.”