For the second year running Ireland outscored France in tries, so there was palpable frustration at the failure to get a win, writes GERRY THORNLEY

FOR THE second year running, Ireland outscored France in terms of tries but came away with that empty feeling. Admittedly it wasn’t as disappointing as last season’s 25-22 loss after scoring three tries to one, but it was still an empty feeling nonetheless.

“I just got interviewed by the BBC and they said, ‘you must be happy with that result’,” recalled Jamie Heaslip, more than a tad miffed. “You know for a lot of the guys that’s a pretty hard pill to swallow. We came here to win, we outscored them two tries to one and we’ve come away with a draw. So it’s a bit of a mixed bag.”

After a good week’s preparation, the squad had drawn confidence from the achievement of their provinces on French soil. “For some reason people say it’s impossible to win over here yet all the clubs have won over here and done very well over the last few years. The one thing we know all about French teams, you hold onto the ball, go through the phases, and take your opportunities and don’t give them opportunities – and you’ll win the game. So it’s a little bit frustrating on our behalf but that’s just the way it went.”

The Wesley Fofana try, he said, demonstrated French opportunism in what, he said, had been a weirdly stop-start game.

Looking ahead Heaslip maintained: “We’re in good shape going forward. We’ve got Scotland on Saturday and a six-day turnaround, so we’ve just got to get our bodies right for that. They are a good outfit, they are going well so we’ll have to focus on them. That’s all we can really do; we can only focus on the next game. We want to win and we want to end this championship well.”

For Tommy Bowe a second successive brace took his tally to five in the championship, three clear of anyone else. “Yeah, it’s always nice to get over the try line,’ he said. “To have scored five, to have scored two in each of the last two games, I’m a fairly happy man in that respect. At the same time, you would hope that scoring two tries over here it would end in a positive result and I’m very disappointed that it didn’t.”

There were, inevitably, thoughts of him emulating Brian O’Driscoll’s achievement in 2000. “It would have been sweet if I had but in the second half I didn’t even touch the ball. I think there was a chance when I could have got a second intercept in the first half and I probably should have held onto it.

“We were extremely upbeat at half-time,” admitted Bowe. “We were very positive before the match and we really took it to them in the first half. In the second half we knew we had to continue the same thing but it was very difficult to really turn around the game. Whenever we got into their areas of the pitch we seemed to make a few small errors we didn’t make in the first half and we’ve very disappointed.

“Last year we were three tries to one and indiscipline again cost us. A soft try we gave them in the second half as well. Indiscipline again I suppose is a key issue.”

Needless to say therefore, the mood in the post-match away dressingroom was more akin to a defeat than a win. “Yeah it did, without a doubt. A draw, I suppose, is meant to be a good result over here, our second best result in 20 or 30 years, but we gave ourselves that opportunity to come away with a win and to not score a point in the second half was very disappointing.”

Asked if the disappointment would make it harder to re-focus for the Scottish game in just six days’ time, Bowe said: “I think we’ll look at the things we did well, especially that first half, for things to reflect positively upon. Now it’s a case of getting everybody fit and out onto the pitch again with the smiles back on our faces. We’ve two enormous matches ahead of us and it’s up to us to pick ourselves back up.”