Ireland Captain James Ryan explains the decision to go for three points late on

Ireland captain and lock James Ryan has explained Ireland’s decision to go for three points near the end of the game against France.

With France leading the game by six points, Ryan opted to take the three points from a penalty in the French 22 - turning down the opportunity to go for the corner in search of try.

Ireland scored one of their two tries from a maul shortly before the penalty but after a brief discussion between the team’s leaders, Ireland opted to go for the posts.

Joey Carbery slotted a penalty to make the score 27-24 in favour of France.

Speaking after the match Ryan said that he was confident that Ireland were able to go on and win the game having gotten within three points at the time.

“We just felt like it was the right decision at the time. I think we were imposing our game on them at that period,” Ryan explained.

“We felt confident in our attack and we thought that we’d bring the game to three points. I think we backed ourselves to go and win the game then off the back of that.

“It was very tough. They’re a serious pack but as I mentioned there when you give them access into the game through little mistakes – handling errors and maybe a little bit of indiscipline at times – the whole game becomes much harder.

“So the big thing for us is maybe limiting their entries into the game, which maybe we let ourselves down a bit at times.”

“It’s the right decision, there’s no doubt about that. They feel the game, they’re in the moment, there was plenty of time left,” Farrell said.

“In fact, didn’t we have a line out after that when we were a couple of points down? We got the three points back, we had a line out and the opportunity to score the try and we didn’t. That’s the game, so I back them to make those calls.”