Last night left Irish fans saturated with rain, if not life.
Ireland accepted their fate long before kick-off, and hence left with some shred of dignity: just a 2-0 defeat; albeit one in which, to use an old phrase, they were lucky to get nil.
Ireland didn't create a chance until the final minute and had just 17% of possession in the first-half, with Martin O'Neill admitting after the game Ireland were "second best all evening". While Ireland defended reasonably well - the two goals they conceded were frustratingly avoidable - they didn't virtually nothing with the ball, and these limitations did not evade the gaze of the watching French press.
Journalist and commentator Mark Rodden shared a particularly damning line from L'Equipe's match report:
The Irish resistance, on the other hand, wasn't considerable. With Martin O'Neill and Roy Keane, the best footballers were on the Irish bench.
Their player ratings, meanwhile, were characteristically harsh. Kevin Long was the only player to score above a 4 (he got, eh, 5) while Colin Doyle and Alan Browne were awarded 3 each.
L'Equipe's ratings for France v Ireland pic.twitter.com/AoV7N2hnnz
— Mark Rodden (@MRodden) May 29, 2018
L'Equipe were reasonably impressed with the French performance, however, headlining their report "Not so bad, was it?", saying that they showed some encouraging signs against a "very weak" Irish team.
L'Equipe were most impressed with Bayern's Corentin Tolisso and full backs Sidibé and Mendy, seeing the trio as the latest solution to Didier Deschamps' endless search of his strongest, most balanced starting XI.
Elsewhere, Le Monde praised the French performance against "the very weak Irish team". Or should that be, er, The Eire.
The Eire had brought its weather but not much else, and the 11 Irish seemed a distant cousin of the one who, for an hour, had given a hard time in the round of 16 to Les Bleus at Euro 2016.
They even lacked the traditional fighting spirit of Northern Irishman Martin O'Neill, a coach so calm that Roy Keane could be added without fear of broken dishes.
They went on to describe the game as a "filmed training session", and ended their report by calling for Italy to offer a sturdier test this weekend.
We will ask the Italians, not qualified for the World Cup, to refuse the status of sparring partner and to test a defence which remains, two weeks before the flight, the last pebble in the wet shoes of Didier Deschamps.
