'France have the power and they have the pace' - McWilliams says Ireland can't dwell on Wales defeat

Ireland head coach Greg McWilliams says they must be braced for an even bigger test when they continue their TikTok Women's Six Nations campaign away to France this week.

The McWilliams era began with a defeat on Saturday, surrendering a 19-10 lead in the final quarter of their meeting with Wales as they lost 27-19 at the RDS.

And while Ireland showed ambition and skill in attack, they were ultimately undone by the blunt power of the Welsh forward pack, who stayed patient throughout and used their dominant scrum and lineout to great effect.

France, who finished second to England last year, began their campaign with a comfortable 39-6 win against Italy on Sunday, and will be heavy favourites to make it two wins from two when they host Ireland on Saturday (live on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player) at Toulouse's Stade Ernest Wallon.

And McWilliams says while Wales did their best to go through Ireland, the French can also go through their opponents, as well as around them.

"That's the thing, France have the power and they have the pace. They can play tight and narrow. They can play wide," he said after Saturday's defeat.

"I think we've got our homework done on France. We'll obviously watch their game this weekend.

"We'll look at our own performance and we'll cleverly chose the areas we need to focus on.

"Sometimes as a coach you can break down a game and see many areas and you have to be smart in making sure that sometimes less is more, so we're not deviating off our process, we just need to be better in certain areas of it."

The former USA assistant was keen to stress the positives of Ireland's display in the wake of their eight-point defeat.

While they ultimately conceded five tries, their open-field defence was consistently strong, while they