Well that was horrible to watch and it must have been even worse to play in. A France team with no ideas, no nous, no values bludgeoned Ireland both legally and illegally until Ireland wilted. It was 10 minutes too far for an Ireland team that had been in the trenches against Wales at 5pm Sunday.
Those 15 minutes of trench warfare in front of the Ireland goalposts in the final quarter were illuminating though. We've seen Ireland employ the 'bend but don't break' approach defensively in the past, but throughout that time, we had a larger-than-life presence shouting holy murder in the middle of it. Today, Ireland didn't have Paul O'Connell. And Ireland broke.
Whatever about tactics or selection or execution - and those are all worth discussing in the wake of this defeat - Ireland are seriously lacking in leaders. By the time of Medard had scored that try, most of the people interviewing for O'Connell's vacancy - Best, O'Brien, Sexton - had all gone off. Ronan O'Gara said Ireland were 'defensively brittle'. Ireland were never brittle when O'Connell was there.
We all mourned the greatness of Brian O'Driscoll after he retired, and Joe Schmidt found a far-less-sexy replacement in the shape of Jared Payne. Gone were the linebreaks and the swashbuckling rugby but Ireland won last year's Six Nations without BOD.
We've had three Ireland test matches without Paul O'Connell. We've lost two and drawn one. In all three, you could not help but notice the void left by O'Connell. This is not to slander Mike McCarthy - there are few rugby players in the world who possesses O'Connell's gifts.
We're just starting to find out how lucky we were.
