Cian Tracey

You want some pizza though.

Yeah, Marin, yeah.

He's like, go, go, go.

Yeah, I think Irish rugby has had reality checks over the last while since the World Cup.

I just think this is the latest one.

I think maybe you go back to the Six Nations game in Dublin against France last year.

That was certainly a sobering reality check.

Obviously, losing to the All Blacks in Chicago weren't great.

And then what South Africa did to Ireland in November was absolutely a reality check.

as i was sitting there watching yeah alongside you guys obviously like your mind kind of drifts back to 23 and the last time that ireland were here and the weekend that they were part of like two of the best games in terms of the back-to-back quarterfinals that were here and to see how far they've fallen since then is quite jarring now i will caveat that with and i seem to be the only one just from talking to a few of our colleagues and you certainly wrote briefly after the match

Was it 22-0 at halftime and then France scored their fourth try after halftime and it goes to 29-0?

At that point, I'm wondering what the record defeat Ireland have suffered in Paris is.

I was wondering where Ireland are going to score a try.

Yeah, and I don't want this to sound like that I'm giving them a free pass, but I do think the way that they did... Look, it was a heavy loss, don't get me wrong, but I think it could have been so much worse.

And the reasons it wasn't worse was because the fears that I had, and I presume most of our listeners and our watchers had coming into the game, was that the scrum could get dismantled, and it didn't.

It absolutely held its own, and I think Jeremy Lachman deserves a lot of credit for that.

Yeah.

The line-out was mostly good.

They had a couple of ones when Ronan Kelleher came on at the end, which didn't go, but generally the set-piece was good.

I thought the impact of the bench was impressive as well.