Easterby's strong case for the defence

In what is rightly being regarded as one of Ireland's best ever championship performances, the side missed an incredible 38 tackles in the 32-19 win over France.

Wingers Damian Penaud and Ethan Dumortier were responsible for most of those, so evasive were the tricky French wingers on Saturday.

But in a world of always looking for places to improve, it’s as good a place to start as any for the championship chasers.

"Maybe Penaud and Dumortier had something on their legs," joked Simon Easterby.

"They seemed to be pretty difficult to put down. They might have greased up for the game.

"It’s partly individual one-on-one work, which the lads have been excellent in doing.

"But part of it is that connecting and yes, the missed tackle count is too high, but sometimes there would be a missed tackle marked on data but actually what it has done is it’s affected what they’ve had to do, so that missed tackle might result in a turnover because you’ve forced someone to step inside or you’ve forced them to do something you don’t want to do by virtue of the pressure you’ve put on a team.

"So that player might miss a tackle, but actually the effect has been quite effective, if you know what I mean, as opposed to him missing it.

"But then off the back of that what happens is do we get a chance to slow them down off that next phase? Do we get the chance to turn them over?

"So I think sometimes the missed tackles need to be put in context.

"What we actually get from the outcome can be very different too, 'missed tackle’ might sound bad but actually the outcome can be different.

"Obviously we want as few missed tackles as we can get."

On Penaud’s try, where he was able to evade a number of tackles either side of a one-two with Anthony Jelonch over 80