Ireland v France: IRFU may have to revisit Six Nations ticket policy as French fans turn Aviva bleu

Midi Olympique reckoned that only 9,000 of the 15,000 supporters that flew to Dublin managed to source a prized ticket for the Six Nations match at the Aviva Stadium. The French newspaper reported, through the evidence of those who sought to buy tickets, that touts were looking for between €1,000-€2,000 PER TICKET on the morning of the game.

Walking to the game some two and a half hours before kick-off the pubs and pavements were packed, the colour and noise provided by the French fans as it would be inside the stadium too.

The official allocation for the visiting team at the Aviva Stadium would be somewhere in the region of 5,000 tickets but there were far in excess of those numbers wearing the French colours to a point that there were times if you closed your eyes, you’d swear you were in the Stade de France. The stadium rocked to the Marseillaise before and during the game.

Irish clubs have long sold some of their international tickets to corporate hospitality interests as a way of raising funds to offset the cost of running clubs. The pre-match atmosphere was provided exclusively by the French and despite losing they were the ones that stuck around to applaud their team who circled the pitch to acknowledge the support.

The Counter Ruck: the rugby newsletter from The Irish Times

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The Ireland squad mimicked their opponents but at that stage large tranches of Irish supporters had already bolted for the pubs. The atmosphere at the Aviva Stadium is generally soulless in the build-up to the game, already diluted by music but when it becomes hard to distinguish who’s the home team based on the decibel levels, it’s perhaps time to examine what’s missing and why.

How can Herring hit not be a ‘high degree of danger’?

Rob Herring suffered a brain injury in the 25th minute of the Six Nations Championship match against France at the Aviva Stadium following a ‘tackle’ by France tighthead prop Uini Atonio.

The French player struck Herring on the jawline, standing upright at the collision point with an arm tucked by his side. It was a red card all day long, the type of incident that World Rugby are looking to banish from the sport.

Except it wasn’t. Referee Wayne Barnes concluded the review of the footage with the words “not a high degree of danger”. He is referring to a man, Atonio, who weighs 152 kgs and is six foot four, coming in from the blindside of the ball carrier and striking him with a shoulder to the jaw.

[ Ireland v France: Rob Herring hit a blatant red card but officials opted to back down again ]

Herring, his senses quite obviously scrambled, wanders towards the loose ball on the ground, and for a split-second looks at it as if it is a foreign object, unsure of what to do, before trying to bend down and unable to grasp it, he bats the ball towards a team-mate.

It was obvious he was in a distressed state mentally. The Ireland medical team eventually lasso him when that sequence of play comes to an end, and he is removed for a Head Injury Assessment (HIA) from which he never returns.

So, the upshot of the incident where the referee rules that there isn’t a high degree of danger is a brain injury that sees the tackled player invalided out of the game by a player standing upright with a tucked arm and making contact to the jaw of another player.

It’s a dog-eared challenge to World Rugby but if the governing body is serious, really serious, about reducing the incidence of head trauma in the sport then incidents of this nature must be punished properly. If the citing commissioner rules the Atonio challenge as a rugby incident, then the sport is heading further down a road that’s not so much dark as pitch black.

13 proves unlucky for Flament but not for the want of trying

Ireland ended France’s run of 14 consecutive victories and in doing so also brought a conclusion to the winning streak enjoyed by 25-year-old Toulouse secondrow Thibaud Flament, who had never been on the losing side with the national team. His 13th cap was to prove unlucky.

It certainly wasn’t for any lack of effort on his part as the secondrow put in a staggering 28 tackles, just three shy of the Six Nations record jointly held by former Welsh lock Luke Charteris and ex French hooker and captain Guilhem Guirado on 31.

He overtook Serge Betsen (France), Jonny Gray (Scotland) and Mako Vunipola (England) on 27 tackles. Flament, though, had a 100 per cent success rate in his tackle stats, a remarkable achievement given the volume.

[ ‘The King of the World is Irish’: French media reacts to Ireland’s Six Nations win ]

Number: 57

The number of seconds that France spent in Ireland’s 22 during Saturday’s Six Nations Championship match, a staggering statistic, especially when weighed against the fact Ireland spent nine minutes and eight seconds in the French 22.

Quote

“We were on 14 victories in a row, but tonight we came across a very big team from Ireland. We have nothing to be ashamed of this defeat. Until the 65th we are still in the game. In the end, they took over, but that shouldn’t call everything into question.” – French flanker Anthony Jelonch calls it straight.