I think it would be a mistake to look at this game as a “new beginning” for Ireland.

The pressures of the last international year have naturally drawn a lot of fan attention to the most familiar names in the Irish squad and, depending on results, that attention can look a little like “why are you still here?”.  When a team is in decline – which, when you consider results, applies to Ireland since early 2019 – the usual tendency is to look at the most senior names and conclude that things would be much better without them there.

Sometimes it works out. If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember that game against Scotland in the 2000 Six Nations when Warren Gatland picked young lads like Horgan, Easterby, Hayes, Stringer and O’Gara en-masse, overturned a 12-year losing streak against Scotland, and the rest was history.

Different game, different time.

Italy, for example, have committed to backing youth and “the new” during this Six Nations. Franco Smith’s selection against England has an average of 16 caps between them with their most experienced players being Tommasso Allan (63 caps), Carlo Canna (48), Andrea Lovotti (43) and Guglielmo Palazzani (42). Remove those players and the rest have an average of 10 caps. That’s pretty inexperienced and it remains to be seen if it’s going to be successful but, in a way, how bad could it be? Italy are not expected to win the Six Nations every year or even be in contention coming into the last round so why not try something new? Sure, that inexperience probably played a part in coughing up a 50-10 defeat at home to France last weekend but that kind of result has to be factored in for Italy over the next two years as they try to scale up their excellent u20 sides of the last few years to full test level. There’s no guarantee, however, that Italy won’t just keep losing regardless of who they bring in. Just because you give young players a chance en-masse, it doesn’t always work out like the fairytale that was February 2000. If Italy keep up a losing streak in the Six Nations for the next three years, it’ll be par for the course.

Expectations in Ireland are different.

We’re so used to seeing Irish provincial sides peppered with youth dispatching heavily rotated opposition PRO14 sides that there’s a natural tendency to assume that the same would happen when the context and levels change. If you ignore context, you would look at Leinster beating Cardiff 40-5 in the RDS with Ryan Baird, Harry Byrne, Ciaran Frawley and Scott Penny in the lineup and think – these guys should be starting for Ireland, right?

Maybe that’s correct. Maybe you should just throw them in and expect test-window PRO14 results to scale up to the highest level of the game.

But it also ignores the presence of hugely experienced players in that Leinster vs Cardiff game like Peter Dooley (85 Leinster caps), James Tracy (121 Leinster caps, 8 Ireland caps), Michael Bent (150 Leinster caps, 4 Ireland caps), Ross Molony (107 Leinster caps), Dan Leavy (72 Leinster caps, 11 Ireland caps), Rhys Ruddock (184 Leinster caps, 26 Ireland caps), Luke McGrath (140 Leinster caps, 19 Ireland caps), Dave Kearney (159 Leinster caps, 19 Ireland caps), Cian Kelleher (75 professional appearances at Leinster and Connacht) with Devin Toner (255 Leinster caps, 70 Ireland caps) on the bench.

Coaches do not rely on experienced players simply because they have a large number of caps but because they are known quantities. You have a rough guideline of what to expect from that player because of his previous output. You can then combine what you know about the experienced player with what you think a younger player can produce. That is why you tend to see Irish teams combine top-quality experience with high potential youth because we have four professional teams and only so many minutes to go around.

I often see France’s current selection – many players with relatively low cap counts – being compared to Ireland but Fabien Galthié has 14 top-level professional teams to choose from and two fully professional domestic leagues in which to assess all his options. As an example, Galthié has selected players from nine different clubs in this week’s team out of a squad with 11 different clubs represented. He has ample examples of all of the players selected as starters and key players for their clubs. Andy Farrell does not have the same luxury. In Ireland, we have to select differently than Eddie Jones or Fabien Galthié because we have a smaller player pool but, unlike Scotland and Wales, we also have to keep our provinces competitive at the top level of Europe.

So, a bit like New Zealand, we have to curate options for longer, use experience to build experience over a longer period of time and keep in mind that they have one more fully professional club than we do.

So, my point is, Leinster’s results during PRO14 test windows are as much to do with old-stagers like Toner, Bent, Kearney, McGrath, Bent, Tracy and Fardy as they are to do with glittering high-potential young players and the margins are closer still at test level.

Essentially, in Ireland, we build experience by putting youth with experience.

And that goes for double at the highest level of the game. So when I see guys like Sexton and Murray missing from this matchday selection I see it as the loss it is, rather than the unbridled, context-free opportunity that it appears to be for players like Jamison Gibson-Park and Billy Burns.

Sexton and Murray’s experience as top-level internationals and test Lions is a big loss from a game of this stature as it stands right now and it is something that Farrell could have done without this week. The future of Ireland’s halfback pairing will not include Murray and Sexton as, inevitably, they will go the way of all players in that they retire or move on. Craig Casey, on the bench here for what we hope will be his debut, seems like a foundational player for province and country going forward but I can’t pretend like I wouldn’t prefer him running on to play 15/20 minutes with Johnny Sexton in this particular game.

Make no mistake, this is a key game for Ireland that they will have to manage with a number of down-chart depth options cycled up to take on a formidable French side bristling with options. A win here would be one of the best results in Ireland’s recent history.

Let’s have a look at the teams.

France: 15. Brice Dulin, 14. Damian Penaud, 13. Arthur Vincent, 12. Gaël Fickou, 11. Gabin Villière; 10. Matthieu Jalibert, 9. Antoine Dupont;

1. Cyril Baille, 2. Julien Marchand, 3. Mohamed Haouas, 4. Bernard Le Roux, 5. Paul Willemse, 6. Anthony Jelonch, 7. Charles Ollivon, 8. Grégory Alldritt

Replacements: 16. Pierre Bourgarit, 17. Hassane Kolingar, 18. Uini Atonio, 19. Romain Taofifenua, 20. Dylan Cretin, 21. Baptiste Serin, 22. Anthony Bouthier, 23. Teddy Thomas

---

France do not need a lot of possession or territory to win this game.

Their game, in large part, happens without the ball and mostly in their own half until they are in a position to hit you in transition or off a lineout strike. They may look to change that this weekend but it would buck the trend of their last year under Fabien Galthié.

In the 2020 Six Nations, France had the second-lowest amount of carries in the tournament for the second-lowest amount of metres, the second-lowest number of possession’s played by hand, and the second-highest amounts of kicks for the second-highest number of metres kicked. England, the eventual winners of the tournament, were first in all of these categories.

France made the most tackles of any team in the tournament and even though they didn’t have the best defence from a numbers perspective – Scotland conceded fewer points (#1 in the Six Nations compared to France #5 in the Six Nations) and conceded fewer tries (#1 in the Six Nations compared to France’s #5 in the Six Nations) – defence is a big part of their game. It has to be when you generally play for less time in possession than your opposition.

This is entirely by design.

If you go back and look at our game vs France in last year’s restarted Six Nations you’ll see that France had the ball in possession for 19 minutes and 47 seconds compared to Ireland’s 18 minutes and 42 seconds. So what the hell am I talking about? Break it down into where they had possession and for how long, and you can get an insight into how they choose to play.

France only had 1 minute 39 seconds in the Irish 22, compared to our 4 minutes and 25 seconds in theirs.

France only had 8 minutes and 9 seconds in the Irish half, compared to our 12 minutes and 40 seconds in theirs.

France had 9 minutes and 30 seconds in their half of the field compared to our 8 minutes and 2 seconds.

And yet they won 35-27 with Ireland’s score being buffed in the last minute with a Jacob Stockdale try. It was a 15 point loss that wasn’t fully reflected on the scoreboard.

France do not play dumbass phases, they will kick a lot to pressure you and they are comfortable defending for long periods. Their 50-10 win over Italy last week was achieved with only 15.8 minutes of active possession. Only England had lower on-ball minutes and that was during a game where they were getting dominated completely by Scotland.

But reading too much into France’s win over Italy would be a mistake, bar noting they scored their tries on transition and off the lineout with most of their scores coming within two phases of the launch. France could have won that game any way they wanted but there were a few constants with what we’d expect from them – they kicked 34 times (16 long kicks, 18 short kicks) for the most amount of metres over the first round even though Scotland kicked 43 (!) times.

They kick the ball back to you (and contest aerially) before meeting you on transition and then consistently filling the field with defenders, pressurising your carrying game with heavy defenders and choking out your passing lanes when you try to release.

Look at the key principles;

• Smart decisions on when to attack the ruck (ignore all but the most obvious jackal opportunities or when you find yourself defending a carry while isolated off the set-piece or on kick transition)
• Hit and run with one or two tacklers but prioritise filling the lateral space with 12/13 primary defenders
• Pin each ruck with a single contester to draw opposition ruck support and win numbers battle – this isn’t a go for the ball where you can be taken out of the game, you have to counter-pressure the ruck to make the opposition think about you on the next ruck
• When the opposition roll out towards the wing through a back receiver on a shortened field, the last defender in the primary line steps up to pressure the wide pass and encourage the runner back in towards the inside pressure. Backfield player cycles around to cover the kick through.
• One winger and fullback combine with halfbacks to cover defensive edges and backfield. One “big” winger acts as an auxiliary midfield defender on certain positions.

Ireland are always playing into congested spaces on these examples and the same will happen this weekend. We have quick ball, sure, but France are not committing numbers to the breakdown so they will live with opposition quick ball if it means they have players in the line pushing up and out. France do tend to concede offside penalties – a side effect of a high-numbers, high-pressure defence – so retaining the ball is not without value even if you aren’t progressing the ball dramatically, as France can cough up offside penalties as the phase count increases against team’s they rate physically.

This was not true against Italy, for the most part, and we will see if they rate Ireland higher.

So while France’s defence might concede tries and penalties, it creates value because of the physical toll it exerts on the opposition. This is not something that shows up on the statistics sheet but it has immense value.

So how do you break a defence like this? Well, France are as vulnerable to close range pushover tries as anyone so there’s a reward for teams with a strong lineout and maul kicking penalties deep into the 22 if you can muscle up on them in this area of the game, which is easier written than done. Our lineout was the least effective of all the teams last weekend – only 55.6% of our 9 lineouts were completed fully on scheme – so we will have to improve that area of our game, but that isn’t anything we don’t already know.

We will need to begin to hurt France on transition if we want to force them to go off plan. When they kick back to us – and they will, a lot – we need to hurt them on the metres we claw back as we transition into attack and they transition into defence. I think Burns could have a big part to play in this aspect of the game as a nimble counter-attacker but we’ll need a lot of output from Ringrose and Henshaw to provide width across the field. France want to cluster on the first counter hit to dominantly win that collision point so a guy like Burns – in combination with Keenan/Earls – can show France the centre of the field on the run back before releasing the ball across to the openside. Henshaw and Ringrose will have a lot of ground to make up because they’ll be running back on the opposite side to the kick but they’ve got the gas for it. Hurt France on transition and you make them think twice about kicking after three phases in their own half in the early game, which unbalances their production output. If France are worried about kick transition, they will burn more players on dead phases, which limits their effective output in defence and encourages them to use their replacements sooner. They want to use energy on defensive output and set-piece launches, they don’t want to burn phases in their own half.

Their “push” tendency in defence is something that Ireland can absolutely go after. We tried it twice in the last game against them back in the restarted 2020 Six Nations – one ended up as a turnover, the other lead to a try. If France like using number pressure and line speed while living with quick ruck speed, you can use that tendency against them by attacking back against the grain towards the location of the previous ruck.

In practice, this means using a reverse runner off one or two passes to attack the area where France are running from.

 

In the first example, you can see how Beirne was loitering in that central position to wait for Stockdale’s run back across the line. Ireland knew that if France love filling the line, they must leave space somewhere and that usually means the area they just defended on the previous phase.

The Henshaw try works off the same principle, albeit shortened because it’s off a lineout, because it set him back against trailing forward defenders who were caught flat-footed and swiping. The same principle will work on phase play but will probably need two passes before the switch back to increase the distance that the French forward line has to push towards and increase the spacing around the previous ruck.

A loitering forward running what looks to be a line towards the next pod could act as a pass target to make ground before popping the ball to the scrumhalf or the against the grain back for a second touch to the finish. This play is worth running a few times to make France think twice before fanning out too wildly, which can increase our options on our conventional 3-2-2 shape.

They will give us possession, we just have to stress them when they do and use their game plan against them.