Donal Spring Rugby AnalystWe can forget about the second half. It was totally irrelevant in this one-sided contest. Anyone who looks to the events in that period for crumbs of comfort is fooling themselves.

The match was well over, even before half-time, and at the break France would have been thinking more about the semi-final than the 40 minutes that remained in this quarter-final. Ireland also knew all they could do at that stage was to go out and try to salvage some pride.

I think the Australian match may have fooled us all a bit, and I for one thought we had a genuine chance going in to yesterday's game. But within about five minutes of the kick-off we were in trouble in every department. Our scrum was absolutely demolished, and while we were able to get possession from our lineout ball, it was untidy.

But even more surprising was the fact the French were stronger than Ireland on an individual basis in contact situations. Even their smaller players, like captain Fabien Galthie, were able to impose themselves on far heavier Irish players, in this case Victor Costello.

It was interesting that right from the start of the match, France committed one or two forwards to driving us back at the breakdowns. They obviously set out to drive Ireland back in every area and this they did very well. As a result we were never able to get into any stride or rhythm and looked shell-shocked for much of the opening period.

A question I'd ask is why did't we kick our penalties. When we needed to put points on the board, we persisted in kicking for touch against a French defence that looked impregnable. The sad reality is that a lot of the Irish players were out of their depth, and when they look at the video analysis of the game they will be positively embarrassed about the number of relatively easy tackles missed in that opening phase.

Of course we were unfortunate when their winger, Christophe Dominici, scored from an Irish breakdown after our best run of play in the first half. But the reality was they could have had two or three before that anyway.

The match probably emphasised, once again, the gap between England, New Zealand (who I still believe will win the competition), France and, to a lesser extent, Australia, and the other quarter-final contenders. Despite our close result against the Australians in the pool game, the gap is still significant.

There are now more athletic players in the top teams. The changes to the laws in recent years have given more scope for athleticism, particularly in the forwards, while adding a demand for more physique in the backs. The countries with the smaller selection pools are always going to suffer in those circumstances, and that's what has happened. For years we were able to use our brains and tactics, some might say in a destructive manner, to compete with the more athletic sides.

We can no longer kill the ball, slow the game down or do things like wheeling scrums, and hence we've had to change to play the same game. Hopefully, with the growth of the game at schools level, the player base will expand. However, the worry in this regard must be the weakness of the clubs in Ireland and the dependence of our provinces on so many foreign players.

Ireland badly needs a full back. Munster's answer is to bring in New Zealand's Christian Cullen. Leinster rugby has shut the door for any aspiring outhalves for four years by signing Argentinian Felipe Contepomi. While these selections may help the respective provinces in their European Cup campaigns, they won't do anything in the long run for the Irish team.

The most that can be said about our World Cup run is that we fulfilled our contract and finished as high as one could expect. Obviously the highlight was against Australia, but as Scotland showed in the first half in their quarter-final match, Australia are clearly at the bottom of the top four. Everybody can see where our weaknesses are. We have a long, long way to go before coming close to being even possible contenders for a World Cup.

France looked very good in the first half. We said they had it easy before the Irish game and I think they will probably be thinking now they had it easy yesterday as well.

(In an interview with Johnny Watterson)