British & Irish Lions
• British & Irish Lions tour Australia in 2013
Ireland Rugby
France 25 – 3 Ireland
Jean-Baptiste Elissalde’s boot and two tries from Vincent Clerc gave France the win they needed to keep their World Cup hopes alive. Ireland’s only score came from a drop-goal in the first half by Ronan O’Gara.
Scoring opened early for France after Ireland did not retreat the required 10 metres following a previous infringement, and a seventh minute opening penalty was easy for Elissalde.
O’Gara missed his chances to level things in the eleventh minute.
Shane Horgan made a fantastic try-saving tackle int he 18th minute, when the video ref denied Clement Poitrenaud his try. Unfortunately Ireland were judged to be offside and Elissalde dropped over a simple penalty, only to do the same again in the 22nd when Ireland’s hands were found to be in the ruck.
Michalak missed a penalty from the halfway in the 36th and O’Gara immediately dropped a 25-metre drop-goal to reduce the deficit to 9-3.
Just before half time Elissalde put his fourth penalty over to make it 12-3 at half time.
The second half looked promising as Ireland came out firing. However Elissalde wasn’t about to break his 100% record in the 55th minute, taking another penalty to make it 15-3.
Then the tries came. With 57 minutes gone Michalak put through a kick with the outside of his right boot to the right corner and it fell perfectly for Clerc.
With O’Connell in the sin bin, Clerc collected Elissalde’s chip and forced his way over for a second score in the corner.
With Ireland on the end of a battering now, they simply defended hard to restrict France’s winning Margin.