Ireland skipper Nichola Fryday rued the lack of a clinical edge from her side following their record TikTok Women's Six Nations loss to France.
Greg McWilliams' side trailed by just seven points with 22 minutes gone in the first half and had a one-woman advantage for the rest of the game following a red card for Annaelle Deshayes but it was France who pushed on, eventually running out 53-3 winners.
Ball in hand, Ireland showed much more cohesion than in the loss to Wales in the opening round but too often basic mistakes allowed the visitors to clear their lines.
"Yeah, 100 per cent we put them under pressure at times and to not execute those chances that we had is frustrating but look we'll go back and that will be an area that we’ll need to focus on, definitely I think is our execution rate in their 22," the Offaly native told RTÉ Sport.
"The other side of it is that we took away a lot of their threats, their maul was definitely a threat that they have and they use it to gain possession up the field through penalties but today the girls really stuck into that battle. We kept them out on that front and we’re proud of that."
Massive underdogs coming into the fixture, the Irish side promised to show more spirit and fight than they demonstrated last week in Cardiff and lock Fryday was eager to focus on the improvement from that outing.
"There’s definitely positives to take from there," said the Exeter Chiefs forwards, whose side actually edged the possession 52 to 48 per cent.
"We asked the girls coming into the match to meet them up front physically and there’s a 100 per cent improvement from that from last week.
"We definitely felt like that was an area we were behind in, we didn’t meet Wales physically and we put it to the French today in our scrum and in our maul defence was a huge improvement from last week.
"So like we’ll take these little positives, there’s 100 per cents work-ons there for us to improve on but for us, it’s a tough day.
"It’s never a nice scoreline like that. But we’ll take our learnings from it and we’ll regroup. We’ve a big away trip to Italy and we want to make a point there.
"I think against the French team you have to be mentally in the game for the full 80 minutes. If you switch off that’s where they execute in those little moments and I think that’s mainly where they caught us in those little moments and lapses of mentality, I suppose.
"But you can’t deny the fight from the girls there, that’s what we asked in the changing room, we said regardless of the scoreline that we show the pride in the jersey and we show the fight and the want that we have as a group.
"For me that was definitely there today from the girls and the scoreline doesn’t reflect that, I suppose, the heart and the want that is there."
