
Share
7th February 2021
08:18pm GMT

"Yeah. You said it. It's clear for me. Tompkins sticking his hand out, the hand in the ruck, I don't know what else to say. I'm not blaming that, I blame ourselves for the loss but when you show the bravery that we showed, they're tough to take but it's not a surprise really."
Before he had taken his seat in the briefing room, Ireland head coach Andy Farrell had been in the same chair as he reflected on some of the big officiating calls that cost his side.
"Obviously the red card and a couple of decisions that could have gone our way regarding yellow cards, etcetera, that will be reviewed. On the back of that, some errors that we invited them back into the game with... I've seen them [red card calls] given before so I'll let people who get paid to assess that do that."
On the lack of yellow cards shown to the Welsh, Farrell commented, "I don't know whether they'll be reviewed or not, I don't know whether they agree or not but in the cold light of day, from what I saw, there was one or two there."
Farrell felt Johnny Williams could have been binned for a head-on-head clash with Garry Ringrose. "I don't know what the mitigating factors were or what was said on the field but there's that and a few more things we'll need to go through and assess," he said.
"But having said that, we were still in control of our own destiny. We gave a couple of crucial penalties away that got them back in the game, one exit scrum where we knocked the ball on and that gave them the try. "A valiant effort, I thought we played some really good stuff at times and asked a lot of questions, but at the same time, we were in the fight up until the death to win the game but if a few more things had been a bit tighter that were in our control, we could have won the game."Up next is a confident France side in Dublin, next Sunday, and Farrell says Ireland will need to 'give the performance of a life-time' to keep their championship hopes alive.
Explore more on these topics: