France may have claimed a famous 42-27 victory, but in the moments after the match Fabien Galthié was too furious about the injury suffered by Antoine Dupont to take great pleasure in his side’s win over Ireland.
Dupont was forced off the pitch in the 30th minute after Tadhg Beirne collapsed on to his knee while attempting a clear-out. Galthié described the incident as “reprehensible”, and has highlighted the actions of Beirne and Calvin Nash, who received a yellow card for a high tackle on Pierre-Louis Barassi, in his post-match report to the citing commissioner.
“There is a suspicion of a quite serious knee injury to Antoine,” Galthié said. “He is suffering and we are suffering with him. I don’t want to go into details, mainly due to medical confidentiality.”
Galthié refused to be drawn into public criticism of the referee, Angus Gardner, but explained that he was unhappy that “we had players who never came back on” while both Beirne and Nash were able to continue. “We are angry and we want an explanation; so, we have cited two players. We must protect our players.” It seems inevitable that both men will be unavailable for France’s final match, against Scotland.
Dupont was furious as he left the field, and the French players asked Gardner why Beirne was not being punished. Gardner explained that he believed it was a genuine accident.
Ireland’s head coach, Simon Easterby, defended Beirne. “I think it’s just a rugby incident where Tadhg cleans out someone in front of Antoine Dupont and he gets hit on the back of that. That can happen. Players have a real awareness now about cleaning out on the lower limb of a player, which could create that type of injury that happened today, but that wasn’t the case.
“Tadhg was securing his own ball and unfortunately that happened. It was just one of those things, unfortunately. I probably have to look back at it again, but we feel like the right decision was made.”
Easterby blamed his team’s lack of finishing for the defeat. “It’s very disappointing. We felt like we were in the game at half time, at 8-6 down and we were confident that if we started well in the second half, which we did, we could kick on and make them pay because of our fitness and our ability to go well in the second half, which we’ve done in previous games in the tournament. But unfortunately, we probably just didn’t take enough of our opportunities throughout the game in their 22, and vice versa, we conceded too easily ourselves.”
• This article was corrected on 9 March 2025 to reflect the fact that Calvin Nash received a yellow card, not a 20-minute red card.
