Six Nations / France 35 Ireland 17: Eddie O'Sullivan was possibly right when suggesting that when trailing 28-10 entering the final quarter, at that juncture previous Irish treks to Paris would have ended in a rout, writes Gerry Thornley at Stade de France.
And averting one with a spirited if consolation rally and a brace of tries in the final quarter was a mercy of sorts.
But it was surely stretching things to suggest that the winning margin of 18 points flattered the French, that they took the only four chances that came their way, and by highlighting the Ronan O'Gara crosskick which eluded Anthony Horgan late on, stating that a final count of four tries to three would have given a more accurate reflection of the match.
It would have been misleading. Ireland did begin the game well, kicking cleverly in taking a 3-0 lead and in taking the game to France for much of the first 15 minutes.
But for the remainder of the half one team seemed to want the ball more the other as Ireland, continuing the kicking game of the World Cup, fell back into a containment exercise.
Perhaps relieved to be only 11-3 adrift at the break, Ireland came back to within a point but this merely served to galvanise the French. A 17-point salvo within 13 minutes put an end to the contest.
In this and much else, the game also followed a largely predictable path. As expected, the Irish lineout was a good deal more secure than the scrum, in part because the French - in the time-honoured, Gallic fashion - targeted the Irish put-in far more than the Irish throw-in.
Apart from the boot, the lineout maul was Ireland's most effective means of go-forward ball and asked some serious questions of the French forwards.
According to the official match stats Ireland did not make one clean line-break in the whole match, though I counted four - fittingly enough by Paul O'Connell, Shane Horgan, Gordon D'Arcy and Victor Costello.
Not unexpectedly though, with Costello curiously kept under wraps until the last four minutes, the backrow lacked oomph.
At scrum time, France attacked the first five Irish put-ins to such an extent that in three of them they conceded penalties, but also took one against the head (gaining three points off it) and disrupted the other. The Irish scrum regrouped to an extent, but it was one of Ireland's sore points.
But there was also a question of what each side did with the ball. In broken play particularly, when required to do something off the cuff, Irish players often looked uncomfortable, never more so than when a surprised Simon Easterby spilled a reverse pass from Peter Stringer in the middle of the field. As in the World Cup, you get the impression of players who are afraid to make a mistake.
O'Gara played much of the game in the pocket, Ireland rarely taking quick ball off the tail and with the outhalf or Kevin Maggs coming onto the ball flat, perhaps discouraged by the memory of the World Cup and a thumping double hit on Maggs early on. Nor can one recall them probing the blind side.
In taking on the French occasionally out wide off set-piece ball, Ireland didn't have the cutting edge to get around them, nor the mobility up front to recycle it. Had Brian O'Driscoll, Geordan Murphy and Denis Hickie been there it might have been different.
With Ireland again employing far more of a kicking game until the throw-it-about endgame, this meant that France had more of the ball - 14 throws to Ireland's eight in the first-half.
Take two second-half lineout mauls from inside the Irish 10-metre line on the right-hand side. From the first, D'Arcy adroitly broke a tackle to set up ruck ball before O'Connell ran hard and freed his arms for an offload in the tackle.
In the phases that followed, the ball broke kindly for Maggs and Shane Horgan, but the keep-it-in-the-hand approach was rewarded when O'Gara gathered his own chip ahead to put Anthony Foley over.
From a near identical starting point within seven minutes after another recycle off D'Arcy in midfield, O'Gara kicked the ball rather aimlessly down the middle of the pitch. Vincent Clerc gathered, Nicolas Brusque straightened through the heart of the statuesque Irish ranks with a stunning counter-attack, and linked with David Auradou for Serge Betsen to give the scoring pass to Pascal Pape.
Ireland are a better team when they have the confidence to keep hold of the ball.
It was also revealing to observe the contrasting responses to conceding a try for the first time in the match. After Yannick Jauzion had broken through O'Gara's tackle on a switch back with Frederic Michalak, and the halves and Brusque combined to put Vincent Clerc over in the corner, Ireland played it by the numbers in kicking the restart long. But instead of gaining a throw-in on half-way, Foley conceded the throw from Brusque's huge punt.
By comparison, after the Foley try, Michalak let his restart hang just over the 10-metre line as the French rolled up their sleeves for a quick response, contested the ball and won it.
Apart from D'Arcy, who deserved his moment when creating Tyrone Howe's try after intense mauling pressure from the pack, and late on the previously under-used Shane Horgan, Ireland looked a little stale and weary.
Though their effort and mauling was top notch, and O'Connell really put his body on the line, they had nothing like the same dynamism and willingness to play what was in front of them. They looked to be playing more by numbers.
Handling errors littered France's game. Yet this was the product of a much more ambitious running game, and their policy of seeking to keep the ball off the deck, and offloading before or in the tackle, invariably found holes. Evidence of this was the classy midfield try finished off by Jauzion and then Elissalde's snipe through a wilting Irish defence for the fourth after Michalak, Pieter de Villiers, Yannick Bru and Brian Liebenberg cranked up the keep-it-alive running game.
France undoubtedly scaled the greater heights.
