Richie Murphy proud of Ireland U20s despite heavy final defeat

Richie Murphy admitted his Ireland side were "outplayed" by France in their World Rugby U20 Championship final defeat, but says his admiration for his players has grown even further on their run to the decider.

Ireland were blown apart by a rampant French side at the Athlone Sports Stadium in Cape Town, Les Bleus scoring five second-half tries to run out 50-14 winners and claim their third U20 world title in a row.

Ireland had made a bright start, leading 7-0 and 14-10 at stages in the first half, but the power and pace of France proved far too much for the Six Nations champions, whose 11-game unbeaten run came to an end.

"Outplayed, yeah," was the short assessment of Ireland head coach Murphy.

"In fairness the French are very good, we knew that going in. We knew that would have to be very accurate in order to get ourselves in the game. We started pretty well."

The game flipped early in the second half when Ireland were down to 14 players following a Paddy McCarthy yellow card, with Pierre Jouvin and Nicolas Depoortere both scoring tries for France in a five-minute period, turning their 17-14 advantage into a 31-14 lead.

However, Murphy was wondering what might have been after the game, as he questioned the validity of that Jouvin score.

"Still, couple of big moments in game where we were very much in it, a couple of things went against us.

"The [Jouvin] try on 41 minutes is a killer. If you go back and have look at it, you'll see that someone joined maul from in front of the ballcarrier, which should be a penalty to us, it should be an opportunity to get out of our end, but those moments in the game cause extra stress in your team. We weren't accurate enough ourselves though.

"Our lineout didn't function as well as it has done