Six Nations 2025: Ireland must be better – Simon Easterby

For the second game in this championship, Ireland were behind at half-time against Wales before scoring 17 unanswered points to secure their 19th Six Nations victory from their past 21 games.

The hosts were certainly better than advertised throughout their 15th consecutive loss – Easterby called commentary around Wales in the build-up “unnecessary” – but the head coach feels his side will need to improve against France.

“Yeah, we’ll need to be better. There’s things we weren’t good enough at [on Saturday] and we gave Wales the opportunity to get into the game, but also they played well.

“They did things which we expected and we certainly weren’t coming into the game underestimating what they could achieve with a different mentality, different coaching group. They were always going to get a bounce and we saw that.”

Ireland have won their past two meetings with France but lost the three before that.

In recent seasons, it has come to be billed as the championship’s key fixture with the winner going on to claim the title in each of the past three years.

“It’s exciting that we get a chance after two away games to go home and play in the Aviva,” added Easterby.

“I think we’re really looking forward to that and I’d say it will be a cracking atmosphere. They will be challenging, of course they will.

“We’ll feel like we’ve had a couple of good wins against them recently but we also know they’ve got great strengths and we need to get better ourselves.”