Molloy proud despite World Cup exit

Ireland captain Claire Molloy was proud of her teammates' effort despite crashing out of the rugby World Cup after losing to France.

Facing Les Bleus with only a win sufficient to see the hosts qualify for the next round, they knew it was a tall order and so it proved as a superb French display saw Ireland trail 21-0 at the break.

Having edged past Australia and Japan in their opening two games, Ireland had to lift their performance levels a couple of notches but they were simply blown away by their opponents.

They could have made a real contest of it in the second period if they had translated their possession and dominance into points but they were unable to cross the line.

Cliodhna Moloney finally touched down in the closing stages of the contest but by then it was a case of too little, too late as a 21-5 defeat leaves Ireland facing the Wallabies again in a fifth to eighth place play-off.

However, Molloy, despite being desperately disappointed, took the positives from the loss.

"It's hugely frustrating," she said. "We worked really hard to get into their 22 and then simple handling errors let us down.

"I don't think it's anything to do with our preparation. We met a very good French side. They came at us with everything. We made simple errors; our discipline let us down. We didn't have the ball. You can't play without the ball.

"Credit to them; they didn't let us play. We can look back at our discipline and say 'yeah we gave away silly penalties', and our handling, we can look at that and fix that, but without the ball you can't play rugby.

"I'm proud of what the girls brought in the last five minutes.

"They got over the line and that kind of relentless work rate that we saw in the first two matches that brought us the victories was there again.

"If we could play all our games as a second half I think we'd be a lot happier now."

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