France kicked off their Six Nations defence in style, with a commanding home victory against Ireland. The key to their victory? The humble offload.
France opened the 2026 Men’s Six Nations in emphatic fashion in Paris on Thursday night, wrapping up a try bonus point with half an hour still to play. The margin of victory was built on several pillars, but their offloading game in particular repeatedly disrupted Ireland’s defensive structure.
But why did it prove so damaging?
Ireland were very much second best all across the pitch on Thursday, especially in the first half, where very little seemed to go right.
Much of the post-match discussion focused on the kicking tactics deployed by both teams, who kicked 39 times each, but France did so with far greater variation. They regained nine of their kicks, compared to Ireland’s four. That’s despite Ireland being more committed to a kick-to-compete strategy, while France mixed up their approach.
With ball in hand, France also ran the Irish defence ragged. Ireland slipped off 35 attempted tackles in the game, which is only the fifth time in Six Nations history they have missed as many in a match. Three of the previous instances came between 2000 and 2002.
Those missed tackles were costly: 43% of them resulted in either a line break or a try, the highest rate of any team in Round 1.
Even when Ireland did get hands on their opponents, they often could not complete the job due to one of France’s most reliable attacking weapons: the offload.
During the game, France appeared to be physically superior to Ireland, gaining more metres and beating more defenders than Andy Farrell’s side.
However, this wasn’t borne out in many of the other carrying stats. Ireland actually recorded a higher dominant carry rate at 30%, compared to France’s 24%, and also edged gainline success at 56% to 55%. France’s ability to free their hands in contact and offload to a supporting runner, even if they didn’t ‘win’ the contact or get over the gainline, helps explain this.
Even the fairly basic, top-line numbers underline how central this was to France’s attack. They made 19 offloads against Ireland, more than twice as many as the next highest team in the round (England with nine), and as many as the other four nations combined. Ireland, Scotland and Italy managed six combined, while Wales recorded just one.
However, it was the impact of these offloads that really hurt Ireland. France gained 149 metres from carries made directly after receiving an offload, 90 more than any other side in Round 1.
Those offload-support carries accounted for a quarter of France’s total metres gained (590). By comparison, England’s 59 metres from carries after offloads represented just 10.3% of their overall gainline metres.
Notably, aside from the offload that set up the opening try, none of France’s other offloads directly led to a try or a line break; that makes their metres total even more impressive, given there were few ‘easy’ gains.
-contact figures reinforce that point. France generated 116 post-contact metres from offload-support carries alone, almost twice as many as every other team combined (60). Ireland were unable to get their defensive line set before the next French ball carrier smashed their way into the line, leaving the Irish defensive unit constantly backtracking.
Given Wales’ defensive efforts against England in Round 1, we may well see a repeat of those French numbers in Round 2. It will be interesting to see how they fare when they come up against a more physical outfit such as England, though, who might be able to impact the first-up French carries and stop the offload at the source
That contest, however, will not come until the final round, and there is plenty of rugby to be played before then.
Expected Points Table
Using Opta’s Expected Points model we can look at how the standings would look based solely on the quality of chances each side created in attack.
The only result that differs in the expected points table compared to the actual table is the Roman rain-fest. Based on the quality of each side’s possessions, Scotland should have edged the game by two points and taken a maximum five Championship points back to Edinburgh with them.
The other two results would have stayed the same, although the table shows how wasteful both Ireland and Wales were. The Welsh left 26 points out on the pitch and Ireland 19.
England were the only side to outperform their expected total, scoring eight more points than the model predicted.
We will continue to track these standings throughout the Championship to see how things could have panned out in an alternate AI universe.
Check out our other Rugby Union content on Opta Analyst. You can also follow our social accounts over on X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
How France’s Offload Game Took Ireland Apart in Paris Opta Analyst.
Hence then, the article about how france s offload game took ireland apart in paris was published today ( ) and is available on The Analyst ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( How France’s Offload Game Took Ireland Apart in Paris )
Also on site :