BORDEAUX, France (AFP) - Ireland's assistant coach Niall O'Donovan insisted on Wednesday that Ireland had learnt from their recent Six Nations losses to France and can overcome them on Friday.
The two European giants clash at the Stade de France in a crunch World Cup Pool D match that will almost certainly decide which team reaches the quarter-finals.
France have had the upper hand against Ireland in the last two encounters, winning in Paris 43-31 in 2006 and triumphing 20-17 thanks to a last minute Vincent Clerc try earlier this year at Croke Park in Dublin leaving coach Eddie O'Sullivan with a poor record of just one win in seven meetings with them since he took over from Warren Gatland in 2001.
But Ireland have been looking at the previous two matches ahead of this encounter.
"We need to go back to the Six Nations this year to see how we performed, how we lost the game not at the end but in the first 20 minutes," said O'Donovan.
"We had a very slow start against them in the first 20 minutes (they were 13-0 down after 14 minutes), it was all France, they had 90 percent of the ball in those first 20 minutes.
"They put us under a lot of pressure, we made a lot of tackles, defending, defending, defending until we got to grips with the game and got into it.
"You could say the try at the end cost us the game but we might not have been in that position had we got a better start."
O'Donovan said Ireland also have to learn from the sloppy play that saw them fall 43-3 behind in Paris in 2006 - before storming back in the second half and scoring four tries - and which has also blighted their performances in the tournament so far.
"What we got last week (was) giving up soft possession, giving the ball away cheaply, throwing away 50-50 passes when they weren't on, throwing the long passes when they weren't on and bringing other teams into the game," he said.
"We need to be a bit smarter in the way we actually start games in that sense. We don't take a whole lot of negatives out of (the last two matches against France). There were a lot of positives. We did attack well in the first half (in the 43-31 loss) and all their scores came from our mistakes rather than anything they produced.
"We just have to eliminate the mistakes that we're making and when we eliminate the mistakes that we're making we'll win games.
"We're coming up against bigger teams, there's no doubt about that. France, if we make the mistakes we made in the last two games, they'll punish us like they did two years ago."
