Already 12-0 down, Andy Farrell’s side was frantically plugging gaps in its own 22 as the French came again when Joe McCarthy jumped the gun from the side of a ruck.
Penalty. As obvious as they come.
Thomas Ramos’ dink of a kick from in front of the posts made it 15-0, a three-score game, and Irish fans rueing the needlessness of the indiscretion of a player who, for all his talents and physicality, has been prone to these mistakes.
McCarthy doesn’t need anyone from the sidelines batting for him here. This isn’t that, but it’s worth putting some meat on the bones of that moment because an elite professional player doesn’t get it wrong in a vacuum.
This was raw and uncut.
Ireland’s night was unravelling in jig time. By the time Matthieu Jalibert ran over for their second try, 13 of 53 tackles attempted had been missed. The three-and-a-half minutes between that score and McCarthy’s foul are instructive.
First the restart. Tommy O’Brien competing in the air, Josh van der Flier running to within five metres of the French line and McCarthy on his heels to source the ruck before the whistle was blown for an Irish knock-on.
Scrum. Free for France and the game was being played in the Irish half again. McCarthy made a superb carry through traffic, he popped a short pass to Jeremy Loughman, who spilled it, and then McCarthy had big tackles to make on Oscar Jegou and Charles Ollivon.
He had covered almost the length of the pitch in that time. Then he strayed offside. Add in the fervour felt inside the Stade de France at that point and now we have a more rounded idea of what it’s like in that moment and in that predicament.
“When they’re playing on top of you, yeah… It was a poor penalty for me, definitely avoidable,” he explained when asked about it some days later. “Definitely the ones you kind of wanna not give away.
“I was probably trying to just make a bit of an impact, or maybe get a tackle, and then I knew I kind of got the timing wrong a bit and I tried to pull out a bit. It was just a poor penalty from me and it gave him three points.
“So, yeah, something I didn’t want to be doing. It was just kind of a poor judgment for me and obviously puts pressure on you. They’re playing on top of and you’re looking to try and stop it, but I’m definitely gonna avoid that one.”
Opening the Six Nations on a Thursday night did at least give the Ireland squad a greater degree of room to breathe before reconvening this week for Italy’s visit to Dublin. McCarthy used his down time by playing PlayStation with his brother Paddy.
The younger sibling should have been in France with him, only for the foot injury that ruled him out of the tournament. If there is perspective in that then a performance and a defeat like the one Ireland just shipped is still hard to shake.
“It does eat away at you,” said the 24-year old.
Farrell’s comments about his team’s “lack of intent” were tough to swallow. So too the reactive nature of their effort for the majority of the tie. No wonder, then, that McCarthy was happy to cling to the lifebuoy when some of the few positives were mentioned.
“Yeah, it wasn’t all terrible. Definitely, the setpiece was quite pleasing. I wouldn’t say it was completely dominant, but in the first-half real good at scrum time, I thought. We got a penalty, felt really strong on our ball and their ball.
“A big part that we were talking about going into the game is that France probably maul more than any team in the Six Nations, outfield especially, so we had a plan. We wanted to be real physical around that and stop that and I thought we did that.
“We turned them over, didn’t give them a great platform off that. So, from that perspective, it was quite pleasing. On our own ball, we only lost one lineout, which is generally a pretty solid day at the office in that respect. But obviously, a few other areas slipped in the game.”
It’s two years since ‘Big Joe’ announced himself in that record Irish win in Marseille, and they followed it up with a 36-0 win over Italy in Rome. It’s eleven months since a yellow card in a big loss to the French and then a run off the bench in a squeaky win in Rome.
McCarthy and Ireland will be hoping that trend doesn’t continue.
