Gordon D’Arcy believes Ireland will become a major force if they continue to pursue their high-risk strategy – even though it contributed to their downfall at the Stade de France on Saturday.
Ireland launched a stunning final quarter fightback which saw them peg back a 43-3 deficit to 43-31, the final scoreline after their revival had run out of steam.
Five of France’s six tries were scored as a result of Irish mistakes but D’Arcy insists such a large and decisive error-count is a one-off and should not be allowed to change the gameplan.
"Scoring lots of tries is always the way you want to play. How we were set up to play was the same right throughout the match – from the first scrum we went after France," he said.
"It wasn’t until the 50th minute that we started to make inroads. We played a high risk game and suffered as a result of it, handing France five tries.
"There were blocks, charge downs and intercepts. These might happen once a game but five times is tough.
"France are one of the top three teams in the world and they will always punish those types of mistakes, but we can still play that high risk game and win.
"We’ve got a good taste for it now. We tried to play the same way against Italy but didn’t get the tries we wanted.
"We will sit back and decide how to carry on. If we can put the tries away early on there will be very few teams that can live with us."
