Ireland sent out mixed messages from their camp before their game with France on Saturday: was this a revenge mission for their Rugby World Cup quarter-final exit or not? The head coach, Scott Bemand, had denied it but the captain, Erin King, admitted the World Cup game had added some “venom” to the encounter and the full-back Stacey Flood said France should be “worried if I was them”.

The Irish team may have had the image of Axelle Berthoumieu biting Aoife Wafer, an action that was not caught during the quarter-final but the France back row was given a nine-game ban afterwards, for added motivation if any was needed. There was certainly no love lost between the teams, with the fixture full of tension, squabbles and huge hits.

But Ireland missed the chance to land a vengeful blow on their rivals and the opportunity slipped through their fingers with three disallowed first-half tries and a missed penalty. The visitors’ inability to put daylight between themselves and France on the scoreboard allowed the hosts to take the game away from them in the final 25 minutes.

The result will leave the team and fans with a similar feeling from that quarter-final: that they should and could have won the match. It has been nine years since they got the better of France and François Ratier’s team’s 10th consecutive win over them means they are unlikely to finish higher than third in this year’s Six Nations.

“The tough lesson is that when you get your chances you have to take your points,” said Bemand. “I’m incredibly proud of the effort. We know where we are heading and we just want to keep on getting better.

“You can see the girls have left everything out there and they don’t really know how to feel. This is a cauldron of fire and for 55 or 60 minutes we’ve handled it. What we have to do is go deeper in these games and see more impact when we come off the bench.”

The sold-out Stade Marcel-Michelin saw more than 17,000 fans playing their part and they were deafening not only when it came to the French tries but for their defensive efforts too. One example was a superb covering tackle by the wing Anaïs Grando to hold up Fiona Tuite over the line and the crowd went wild after the referee, Clara Munarini, confirmed it was not a try.

Grando has been an impressive player for France this Six Nations with four tries in three games. She will be one for future opponents to keep an eye on, particularly England with the French looking to end the Red Roses’ stranglehold on this competition. France have not won the Six Nations in eight years but they look best placed to disrupt England’s dominance, and they were the last to beat them in the tournament back in 2018.

England’s title defence is becoming more challenging with each game as their injury list continues to grow, though they are still winning matches by big margins. Sadia Kabeya came off with a shoulder and pectoral muscle injury against Wales and the head coach, John Mitchell, is having to dig into the side’s impressive depth. If Kabeya cannot play the rest of the tournament, something that is yet to be confirmed, then they will not have to look to an inexperienced player. Instead they can call upon Kabeya’s mentor and two-time World Cup winner Marlie Packer.

The former England captain played the full 80 minutes for the first time since the World Cup against Wales and put in a player of the match performance. It could be argued she would start for most other sides but the 36-year-old has fallen down the pecking order with England because of the talent pool including Kabeya and Maddie Feaunati.

Packer said the team still means “everything” to her, despite the fact she has not played as much international rugby of late. “Actually it adds a bit of nerves because the crowds are getting bigger, the expectation is getting more and more,” she said. “When you have played 114 Test matches, your first 10, 15 you are nervous, the ones in between you really enjoy and now the latter end of my Tests I do get a bit more nervous because it means so much.

“Every training session, every time you are out there with the girls, you don’t know when it is going to be your last.”

Packer and the rest of the England squad will play Italy on 9 May when the tournament returns after the upcoming fallow week. France will play Scotland before the likely grand slam decider in Le Crunch a week later. England’s attack is lauded but the ferocious French defence is what could win them the title, to loosely quote Sir Alex Ferguson. France made 240 tackles and missed only 14 of them against Ireland, giving them a tackle success rate of 94%.

All roads may point towards England lifting the trophy again but if France can maintain the defensive intensity they had against Ireland the silverware could be within reach. Ireland were the team looking for an upset in the tournament with a win over France but now it will be the French themselves who have a chance to deliver a statement win against the Red Roses. If they can do it, it would send shockwaves through the tournament.