Paul O’Connell has identified “the winning of the game” for France

Joe Schmidt could have done with him today, eh?

Paul O'Connell was watching Ireland's narrow defeat in Paris from the BBC Sport studio as he was on punditry duty for the day. Ireland fell to a 10-9 loss after a late try from Maxine Medard following a lengthy spell of French pressure but it was a pair of substitutions, half an hour before that score, that O'Connell has pointed to as the turning point in the game. "I think it's an 8-1 penalty count against Ireland in the second half," O'Connell said. "France changed their front row after four minutes (of the second half) when the second scrum came on. "Eddy Ben Arous and (Rabah) Slimani came on and it just made a massive difference to France.

"It's a pity that rugby matches are held hostage to the scrum at times but, on days like this, they are and I think that was the winning of the game for France."

Fellow former Ireland captain Keith Wood was in studio alongside O'Connell and he didn't mince his words about the quality of the match. "It was a dull game," Wood said. "Let's not pretend it was anything other than that. The conditions were pretty poor but as the second half started to move on and move on and move on, the level of control that France had for all the game was actually down here in front of us, in Ireland's half. "They couldn't get any flow at all to get out of it. They spent maybe five minutes at the start of the second half kicking it into the French 22 but other than that, they spent the last 25 minutes in their own 22 and it's nigh-on impossible to score from there."