Ciara Griffin has challenged Ireland to rebound strongly and secure third place in the Women’s Six Nations after defeat to France ended their title bid.
Caroline Boujard scored two tries in a 56-15 France win that means they will meet England on Super Saturday, with the title on the line.
Ireland will visit either Scotland or Italy instead next weekend with third place up for grabs and Griffin believes they can fix what went wrong against Les Bleues.
“We can’t lie, it is a disappointed dressing room but we must look at the bigger picture. It doesn’t finish now and we have next weekend, the preparation and recovery for that starts now,” she said.
“It is not the result we wanted but we will learn from that. I can’t agree with the term ‘one-sided’ because we fought, this group is on a journey and there is a bigger picture involved.
“We need to finish strong, we have a big summer ahead of us and this is the next step up to the top.
“We have third place to play for, we want to win. A lot of the things are fixable and a lot are compounded by our own errors as well.
“If we reduce and limit those errors, it will make it easier for us next week.”
France were quick out of the blocks at Energia Park, with Boujard, Emilie Boulard, Cyrielle Banet and Safi N’Diaye all scoring, while Ireland also conceded a penalty try.
Romane Menager and Boujard added gloss after the break and Ireland head coach Adam Griggs was frustrated with how they started.
“We knew it was going to be a challenge and we didn’t help ourselves, we compounded a good few errors. Their first two tries came from mistakes and we have to learn from that,” he said.
“We were guilty of playing in our half too much and a side like France will make you play for that and they did.
“I think this group will get better with more games we have and what we didn’t get was the line speed and pressure on the defence.
“We had to work really hard in the contact area and that can really take it out of your defensive line as well. But that’s what you get when you play the French.
“We know we have glimpses of what we can do. We scored a couple of tries and we will take those positives out of it.
“Last week was a great performance but it doesn’t make you a great team. This week was a bad performance but it doesn’t make you a bad team.
“We have to make sure we take some of those positive parts from last week and the learnings from this week and build in a performance where we show we are the third best team.”
