It was the World Cup final that never happened but France and Ireland will get a chance to duel it out on Friday week in Marseille.A sold-out Orange Velodrome will stage the opening game of the Guinness Six Nations and the match-up that many had hoped to see last October.It was only those pesky All Blacks at their backs-to-the-wall best and a substandard – given what had gone before – performance from most of the Ireland team, as well as a blocked-down conversion by Cheslin Kolbe in the other quarter-final that prevented a France-Ireland grand finale.Never mind Argentina or England, they were just details, so the prevailing wisdom went.Andy Farrell insists he's over it, while the squad’s World Cup review took place on Monday.
The real tale of how the players have digested the 28-24 defeat three and half months ago will be how they front up against Les Bleus."Loads of us have had different parts of our careers that have had tough defeats and they’re the ones that make the rest of it better," new captain Peter O’Mahony said at the tournament launch on Monday."You’ve got a decision to make: do you want that game to make you better or do you want it to hang over you?"If Ireland were hurt, you can only imagine the raw disappointment that the hosts felt.
A team built to win the Webb Ellis on home soil, beaten by a point by eventual champions South Africa in the best game of rugby union ever played."The defeat to South Africa was hard for everyone," said Gregory Alldritt, who takes over the captaincy from Antoine Dupont, the star who has decided to forsake the tournament in favour of a shot at Sevens Olympic gold."Little by little, we’re in the process of digesting."On a psychological side, we’ve worked on [it with a team] for