France spoil Ireland's Croke Park debut

Pascal Pape of France is beaten to a line-out by Ireland's Donncha O'Callaghan during their Six Nations match at Croke Park, Dublin, on Sunday. PHOTO: AP

Vincent Clerc scored a try one minute from the end and France beat Ireland 20-17 on Sunday to stay on course for another Six Nations championship triumph.

When Ronan O'Gara kicked the Irish into a 17-13 lead -- with a fourth penalty to go with his try -- the Irish only had four minutes to hang on. But Clerc collected a long pass from Lionel Beauxis and ran between two Irish defenders to go over the line.

That gave the French a one point lead and Beauxis converted the try to complete a dramatic victory for the French. Bernard Laporte's team has two wins from two games and is level on points with England at the top of the standings.

"Our spirit in forwards was brilliant," Laporte said. "We stuck to our task well. We'll take some valuable experience from this performance. We beat Argentina in the autumn and Ireland today so now we've beaten two of our rivals in [this year's] World Cup group stages."

French hooker Raphael Ibanez, who scored his team's other try, said they refused to give up.

"Even when it looked like we had lost, there was still hope in the French side," Ibanez said. "We still believed we could win the game."

It was the first rugby union game to be played at Croke Park -- the home of Ireland's Gaelic sports -- with Lansdowne Road being modernized.

The Irish went very close to rewarding a crowd of 82,000 fans with a victory. Instead Ireland has one win from two games having beaten Wales 19-9 a week ago and is level with Scotland, which beat Wales 21-9 on Saturday.

"We couldn't have done any more than we did," Ireland coach Eddie O'Sullivan said. "The boys gave their guts for the cause and that was a cruel way to lose, by any standards."

With Ireland missing captain and center Brian O'Driscoll and scrumhalf Peter Stringer through injuries, France threatened to overwhelm the home side in the opening stages and raced into a 13-3 lead by the 13th minute.

After O'Gara had replied to two penalties by David Skrela, the French put together a slick passing move which ended with Ibanez taking a pass from Christophe Dominici and cutting inside Geordan Murphy's poor tackle before charging 30m to the line. Skrela converted.

O'Gara kicked a second penalty and then ended a strong spell of Ireland pressure to collect his 11th try in 68 appearances eight minutes before half time.