And I said to him, what the hell did you expect? Well, better than that, he said. What do you think we should have done. Don't know. Get rid of O'Sullivan. What's the point in that, I said. Sure he has to go, you'd be a better coach than him. My parting words were that it would be marginally easier for me to become the coach of Ireland than it would be for the IRFU to get rid of Eddie O'Sullivan, think about that. Your man said, what do we do now? I said, we do what we normally do after a match in Paris. Drink heavily and forget about it.

Ireland are out of the competition. They have never scored four tries in their history against Argentina and given their current predicament are unlikely to do so against such a quality side that are playing with such confidence. If it's any consolation to you, France will also be out of the competition quite shortly. This could be attributed to their clown of a coach and the clown prince of outhalves Freddie Michalak.

This tournament, like its predecessors in 1999 and 2003, is following the trend, it is a poor competition. Friday night's match was not a competition. It did not fall into the category of a test match where either side could win it. France were always going to win it.

And nothing I have seen so far has given me cause for excitement or tells me something that I do not already know, ie, who will be the winner of any given match on that day. It will be significant that for the first time ever it will be an all southern hemisphere semi-final line-up.

As for the future, it looks particularly bleak.

And as for the thousands of Irish supporters who turned up on Friday night there is more grief heading their way. I would suspect, at this stage, that none of our provincial sides will emerge from the pool stages of the Heineken Cup. Next year's Six Nations just doesn't look like it's going to get any better with Ireland playing England and their conquerors France away.

Rugby is a simple game and France effectively won it in the video room. They analysed Ireland and how they play, went about their weaknesses, wore them down and eventually put them away in the last 15. No unthinkable complexity to it. They attacked our line-out. They closed down space with real malice and they took their opportunities in Ireland's red zone. The only thing they didn't manage to do was garner a bonus point, something which they were well capable of, but probably lacked belief as they were in the mode of just getting a win.

Back to our Japanese friends. I watched Japan playing Wales on Thursday night in the Millennium Stadium. The unfortunate Japanese were well and truly toasted but there is one thing that you can't say about the Japanese, is that they are not organised.

Hitoshi Ono, the name mightn't mean much to you, was the Japanese second row and he called all their line-out calls and made all their line-out plays. The Japanese won all their line-out ball against quite a physical pack who had them for pounds and inches and raw aggression all over the park. How can that be? Friday night's stats are interesting to observe. Both teams had 20 line-outs. France lost one. The stats say Ireland lost five of their put-ins. But on my reckoning, another five of those possessions were worthless and they ended up putting Ireland under pressure. Eoin Reddan in particular struggled here. He was winning his fourth cap on Friday night but in reality this was his first real cap and in front of 80,000 people. When ball comes raining out of the sky, flicked back unsympathetically with hard hands as though the pill was a hornet's nest it's very difficult trying to deal with bouncing ball on the deck, as Theirry Dusautoir and Serge Betsen have only one thing on their mind . . . ribs. And given Ronan O'Gara's state of mind prior to the game the last thing he needed was pressurised ball coming his way.

I'm conservative by nature, so my priority at line-out time is win it first and then deal with the ball later on. If you sense that the French have got your line-out game figured out, go back to basics. O'Connell's calls were poorly conceived and of the throws which were high risk, ie, the ones that spent a lot of time in the air and were sent to the back, Ireland won none of these and in a brief period of ascendancy, in the opening stages of the second half, where Ireland had put some reasonably effective phases together, had managed to retain the ball and put the French under a little bit of pressure, it was a long ball to the back which undid them. That is criminal.

The French, for their part, made light of the notion that Sebastien Chabal wasn't an international class line-out operator. He picked off three of Ireland's throws and put O'Callaghan under serious pressure. The French had a marvellously simplistic idea of winning lineout ball. They threw everything to the outstanding Julien Bonnaire. Bonnaire normally takes up position in the orthodox number eight slot in a line-out but he won most of his 13 line-out takes in the middle. France were happy to win their ball simply. If Ireland didn't have a platform, there was no point in kicking to the corners. If they couldn't put the French under pressure why kick it to touch.

If they couldn't get a line-out maul platform going, why bother. This was Ireland's principal area of failing and Niall O'Donovan should now ask himself a few questions. You can't afford to have systems failure in an area of perceived strength in a test match of this magnitude.

Fast Eddie probably did have a point when he mentioned Chris White as a contributing factor. The penalty count was 16 to 12 against.

Most of the penalties that Ireland garnered were conceded in the last 10 minutes as White hurriedly strove to even up the penalty count. I estimated six penalties awarded to Ireland in the last 10 minutes, effectively when the game was over. That would leave a true penalty count of 16 to 6, which now puts White into the category of a homer. France could not have gone out of the competition under any circumstances on Friday night.

White played his part. I would suggest that most of Ireland's offences, particularly at ruck and maul time, were absolutely correct. Ireland's defence, although breached a couple of times, held reasonably firm, and I would have thought that they might have had a little bit more self-belief and implicit faith to trust their defensive machinations.

Ireland unquestionably improved on their performances and their error count went from 39 against Namibia to 32 against Georgia down to 10 on Friday night. Their application of effort was noteworthy. Their work ethic and sharpness greatly improved and once again you couldn't fault braveness as their diminished sense of self-danger gave way to team ethic . . . but it's not enough. Once again, the French knew how to beat Ireland and were completely confident and this manifested itself in how patient they were.

Ireland's scrum stayed solid for most of the game, but in the 57th minute France got the hoosh on them and it was an indication to the French that there was no more gas left in the fuel tank and the French cranked up the intensity. Ireland struggled to recover their own ball and the French were awarded a scrum immediately afterwards. This is where the French conceived the game-winning try.

I looked at Ireland's defensive alignment from the scrum. Andrew Trimble had moved infield, quite possibly to bolster up O'Gara's channel. I looked at Elissalde, who was France's most accomplished player and the most intelligent thinker on the field. There was a 10-metre blind side and I thought to myself, a blind side break by Elissalde or a simple 8-9 and you're in, my son, but the call had already been made and the plan was to draw up the Irish defence and for Michalak to cut an outside chip against the grain back over into the left wing position. This was executed perfectly and all Clerc had to do was time his fielding of the ball and touch it down.

That made the score 20 points to 3 and the match was over. No redemption. This effectively made any argument about use of the bench redundant and no matter who Ireland had on the bench there was nothing they could do for the 20 minutes that was left to retrieve that scoreline. End of argument.

With Michalak playing like a fool in the half back position, France could never really make their dominance up front count and if I had been Bernard Laporte I would have Lionel Beauxis on the pitch at half time and France would definitely have got their bonus point. They will regret that as they are now likely to meet the All Blacks in the quarter final and that is just a little bit too soon for them. As for fast Eddie, his team have posted the lowest points total scored by an Irish team for well over 30 years. That is no coincidence and they will struggle to score even 10 points against the Argies next Sunday.

Oh woe, woe, woe.