But Les Blues rallied through Wesley Fofana’s 51st minute try with Morgan Parra adding two penalties to his pair in the first-half as Ireland blew a glorious chance to claim victory at the Stade de France for the first time since 2000.

The result means Wales are now the only team still on for a clean sweep with Ireland effectively out of the running for the title, and that was a bitter pill for O’Connell to swallow.

“There's certainly a big feeling of defeat and an opportunity lost,” said O’ Connell. “We conceded a really soft, poor try and we're really disappointed with our second-half performance.

“I'm not sure what the penalty count was, I think it was 6-1 which makes it very difficult to compete. We're very frustrated.

“At half-time we said we must score first, which is what you say every time you lead away from home, but France are a very good side.

“They're World Cup finalists, they nearly won the World Cup so they were always going to come hard at us. Unfortunately they got the first score. Had we got the first score it would have been really good for us.

“To not score in the second half was very frustrating. To not tag on at least three points was our undoing.”