JOHN O'SULLIVANfinds coach Declan Kidney in no mood to hide behind the positives: 'It's results people want and that's our job', he concedes

RUDYARD KIPLING'S poem Ifseems an appropriate backing track to the footage of yesterday's Six Nations Championship match, encapsulating a frustrating afternoon for Ireland at the Aviva Stadium in a contest that was ultimately decided by small margins.

This defeat will smart for a variety of reasons, the lack of discipline at ruck time that allowed French scrumhalf Morgan Parra to kick his side into contention and beyond; the turnovers that stifled momentum and undermined good field position and the lack of precision at crucial times.

Ireland craved steely-eyed precision in the pulsating end game, but could not shake off their propensity for errors.

The disappointment will supersede all other concerns in the short term, the consolation of outscoring the French by three tries to one, having all the comfort of a pebble in the shoe.

Ireland coach Declan Kidney didn’t try and sugar-coat the unpalatable. There were no silver linings to lighten the dark clouds that hovered over this defeat.

“When you look at all the people who have paid to get in or staying at home, they are looking for us to get a win. An improved performance means you are not in the doldrums; at the same time we want to win it and I think we would be hiding behind something if we were to do anything else but acknowledge (the disappointment).

“I’d have too much time for the players here, the public and the supporters to try and hide behind a couple of aspects. I know they are there; that we are getting better and going in the right direction, but it is results that people want and that is our job.

“I prefer to leave it to others to judge what parts of our game are improving. We will just work on getting results.”

It was a theme that permeated the post-match analysis, with Ireland captain Brian O’Driscoll also candid about the shortcomings on a frustrating afternoon.

“We conceded a soft try to them and they got the 10-point lead, but with 17 minutes (left) on the clock at that point we felt we had massive capabilities to score a couple of tries; definitely.

“We managed to score one of them and the second on eluded us. It was there, but we weren’t clinical. That’s what is killing us. It’s the small things that need tweaking, like I said last week.

“I sound like a broken record, but those things are in our control. It’s just a few individual errors of turning ball over unnecessarily and there are the fine lines between winning and losing Test matches. It’s difficult to take.

“Guys have to go back and look at their individual performances, errors that were made. The more pressure that is put on guys who are in the starting 15 from other players . . . you are going to have to up your game or be replaced. They’re the blunt facts of the matter.

“We have a very good squad and if you don’t produce performances, there is someone there. It’s about fronting up or the possibility of missing out.”

In this respect, Kidney confirmed next weekend’s Magners League fixtures will form a sizeable impact in his selection deliberations ahead of the next Six Nations match against Scotland at Murrayfield on Sunday week.

He admitted: “It is only fair that we take a look at the lads who didn’t start today and see how they go and what they can contribute.

“There’s always a trade off between having the same 15 all the time and the consistency of performance that it can lead to, as against bringing in a spark, a new player who can bring in their own ingredients and skill set to it – maybe put a bit of spark to it.”

The notion of a match day squad and the impact to be gleaned from the bench was another topic. French coach Marc Lievremont periodically freshened his team throughout the second half, while his Irish counterpart largely took a different view.

The result tends to invite the analysis down a certain road in this respect and Kidney said he would review that this week.

“There is no empirical evidence to say which is the right and wrong thing. The French emptied their bench. I didn’t and I would expect there to be good comment about that. I had a good check on how the players were going; it was a fairly stop-start game in terms of penalties, scrums and injuries. All the lads were going well.

“An obvious one would be to bring Denis (Leamy) on for Jamie (Heaslip), but Jamie was up at the goal line with four minutes to go chasing the ball down well. Leo (Cullen) brings a lot into it but I thought Paul (O’Connell) and Donncha (O’Callaghan) were going well as a pair.

“It’s not a case of not trusting the guys on the bench it is about trusting the fellas on the pitch.

“Defensively, we were very sound; there were aspects of their (French) play that we managed to nullify and if you change things around what would the effects on that be? I will take a good hard look at it myself and see what I can learn from it.”

The indiscipline, mistakes and turnovers that undermined Ireland’s performance in Rome were not eradicated in Dublin yesterday, albeit there was more to admire in snatches of high grade rugby against the French.

Going forward the imperative is reduce the former and ramp up the latter.