There are limits to what Ireland can achieve – we may have found them

THIS COULD BE as good as it gets. Andy Farrell has restored vim to the Irish team, and their rollicking victory over New Zealand last November, followed by the utter domination of Wales in Dublin in the first round of the Six Nations, returned them to the standard they enjoyed throughout a brilliant 2018.

Yet a stubborn thought is not easily dispelled: maybe this generation are at the extremities of their talents now.

That view started to formulate watching France take the game away from Ireland in Paris.

For all the courage and attacking brio displayed by Farrell’s team in the second half, they were desperately chasing by then.

The contest was decided by how France played in the first half, when they brought their ruthless physical dominance to bear on the game, and especially at every breakdown.

That powerful advantage, allied to the technical skills that have been allowed to re-emerge in their

game under Fabien Galthié, left Ireland looking helpless when it mattered.

This is not to disregard how Ireland tried to adapt, and in the second half the plan was to make the French, and in particular their big forwards, run more.

The effects of that were clear in the final quarter, with the home players wrecked and Ireland in grim pursuit.

That second 40 minutes was heartening, and the contrast with other visits to the French capital, when Irish sides were battered and never came close to recovering from brutal first halves, spoke to the vastly improved standards followed now.

But behind the pride and the excitement stoked by Ireland’s comeback attempts, was the stubborn feeling that this was a team maximising its effort, throwing everything at a wilting opponent, and just not making it.

Fine margins, the players and their champions might retort. Had the penalty converted by Joey Carbery with seven minutes to play been kicked to the corner instead, then a try could well have resulted, Ireland would have taken the lead, and an exhausted France would have been obliged to summon a retort.

Yet Ireland had almost 10 minutes left to find the winning score. It wasn’t a case that the wrong call over a penalty was the decisive moment in the contest.

France, for all their exhaustion, did not stay huddled inside their own 22 for the rest of game. They worked their way up the field and won a penalty of their own, but only after a tight call by the television match official ruled that Melvyn Jaminet had been held up in trying to score a try.

When Ireland’s need for a try was most acute, it was the wilting French that came closest to finding one.

This was no hard-luck story.

For all the valour shown by the Irish players, they could not live with France when the contest was white hot.

Galthié and his coaches will be concerned at how wrecked the home side looked for the final 20 minutes, but fitness can be improved.

Size cannot, or not to the extent required. And nor can the breadth of options open to a coach drawing on four professional teams.

There are limits to what an Irish side can achieve, and it’s not revisionism to suggest that at their most formidable in the Schmidt years, they played right up to them.

For the past year under Farrell, from the rout of England in Dublin up to that gutsy trip to France, they climbed back to that level.

But maintaining that standard is fiercely difficult, as the collapse of 2019 showed.

The failure to adapt as other teams started to counter Ireland’s tactics was an important contributory factor, as was the reluctance to replace mainstays who had grown ineffective.

Farrell’s tactical approach is more varied than that adapted by Schmidt, and a plan sourced in the belief that the ball should be moved and kept alive as much as possible, has extensive scope for development.

But even if the head coach does that, and even if he rotates and rewards form in as much as his options allow, he will never be able to call upon the power, or the choice, that France and England can in the championship, or South Africa and New Zealand can in a World Cup.

For Ireland to win championships, every game against the big teams requires stellar displays across the field. Sustaining that level is physically and mentally draining, which is what makes World Cups such a particular challenge.

That is a context worth remembering in the current discussion. When the superpowers get it right, resisting them is a mission improbable.