Player Reaction:There wasn't much griping from the Irish players as they straggled out of the bowels of Stade De France. A strong French team that did little wrong and took their chances when they presented themselves were the undoing of Ireland's dreams for this World Cup.

Ireland again made basic errors that allowed the French to edge ahead, and as Brian O'Driscoll and his players tried harder, they were unable to put scores on the board.

"The game started very well for us and we applied a lot of pressure," said the Ireland secondrow Malcolm O'Kelly, who came on in the second half when the match was largely out of reach.

"It was going well and we created some chances ourselves. Unfortunately we didn't put that early pressure into points. We gave away some things that let us down slightly," added O'Kelly.

"We gave away three points and then we gave away another three and then another three before we were able to reply.

"It was really just small errors that were coming into our game, which as you know has affected us throughout this whole World Cup.

"Obviously we are very disappointed. The game was just slipping by for us in the first half."

But the French were also able to claim the points when chances presented themselves and were opportunistic whenever the possibility to score was made available.

"They are opportunistic," said O'Kelly. "We were creating chances but we just were not putting away the final pass. We tried to play rugby but at the moment it's just not coming off.

"The French were able to get their game plan going; they were able to get some turnover ball against us. We were on the back foot the whole way, just going more points down and more points down.

"Unless you are within a score in the last 20 minutes you are always going to be in trouble.

"It just snuck away for us and ended up being a pretty heavy loss for us. We have a huge hill to climb now. We've to try and muster the effort and the courage to go out one more time and prove our critics wrong"

The French, although content about the magnitude of their win, are still not in control of their own destiny.

"We've known from the first match in the pool that we wouldn't be in control of who we played in the knockout stages," said the French captain, Raphael Ibanez. "That is the way it is and we now have to wait and see how things work out for us."