“I could go into a lot of detail on the errors we made, on how we gave France a foothold into the game, but it really was the start of the game which disappointed me.

“We didn’t get out the blocks, we spent a lot of the first 15 minutes in our own half and didn’t bring the energy that the French team brought, which is really disappointing as we want to bring that every time we play.

“Later in the first half we got into more of a rhythm and were getting penalties through the pressure we were putting on the French defence but didn’t convert them into more than three points.

“It probably wouldn’t have been a fair reflection of the first half if we had scored a try to go in 10-10 at half-time, but we did have that chance when they were down to 14-men.

“They were the better team today and even in the second half we started poorly again and we had a real challenge on our hands.

“One positive, I must say, was the impact of our bench – I thought they were really good.

“On a couple of occasions we got into a really good position and close to the French 22 and they broke out – once from a kick through and the second from the restart.

“We seemed to be a couple of steps behind France today early on and we pride ourselves on our energy and fitness and we showed that in the final 20 minutes, but we needed to show that from the beginning.”