Garry Ringrose's red card should kill the idea of a 7-1 split forever and ever

France would have to be bonkers to select seven meat-head forwards and one just back on the bench against Ireland on Saturday.

And if they do, they were not paying attention to Wales-Ireland and what happened when Garry Ringrose's initial yellow-carded was upgraded to a 20-minute red.

A decision that necessitated Ringrose, yellow-carded near the half-hour, to be replaced just before the hour.

Had Ireland gone seven forwards and one back on the bench that would have tied up the 'one' back and caused massive complications had one of the starting backs picked up an injury.

France must surely have watched the game and spotted the added risk involved with not just the seven-one bench they were using against Italy that weekend but also highlighted the greater risk involved in a six-two split.

"It’s something we wouldn’t do," says Ireland assistant coach John Fogarty. "We don’t necessarily want to go to any game with a 7/1 for those very reasons, it would spook us.

"You saw against Scotland against us, they lose two players (Darcy Graham and Finn Russell in the 22nd minute) to a head-collision early on. They had gone 6/2 for that game and it hurt them.

"It’s something that we wouldn’t do for the reasons surrounding that new yellow-red and the reasons I said about Scotland. You can lose two players, it happens.

"Maybe France feel they can cover positions, probably feel they’ve got some forwards who can cover in the backs as well.

"But things happen during a game where you lose players and it becomes very difficult then to play the game the way you want to play it."

Ireland, he suggests, don't care to tinker from game to game.

"It doesn't change our plans a huge amount. We haven't overly discussed it. When we played South Africa in the World Cup, there was the same questions around, what do you think? How do you manage it?

"But we've got a very fit group of forwards that we have a lot of confidence in and we've got a real change-up as well.

"We are confident in the way we're selecting the side, we haven't spoken a huge amount about seven-one, we haven’t really gone there much."

The idea France won't be coming to Dublin mob-handed with heavyweight forwards on the bench is something of a comfort for Ireland who are a lighter side - and one remaining steadfast to, mainly, the traditional five-three configuration.

It is not that Irish players aren't 'adaptable'; Peter O'Mahony seems to get the odd few minutes as a winger, Max Deegan played a lot of the Ireland-England A match last Sunday week on the wing and, while Dan Sheehan always seems to be auditioning for a part out the back, re-jigs are never ideal.

Fogarty might be loath to admit but Ireland's management would be far better off worrying as to what the Leinster spy-in-the-camp, Rabah Slimani, is telling his France teammates.

Slimani has yet to get any game-time this 2025 Six Nations but has, nonetheless, been summoned to France training camp each match week; given he trains day in, day out alongside Porter, Healy, Boyle, Sheehan, Kelleher, Gus McCarthy, Furlong and Clarkson, he is in intelligence agency's parlance, a valuable 'asset'!

"No, not really worried," says Fogarty of the potential security breach. "It's a small, small world, the rugby world.

"If you want to find out about bits and pieces, it's quite easy. Quite easy. I'm sure he does have an insight but we've played these guys a lot, and the lads played them in Europe quite a bit.

"I don't know the guy, he's a very likely fellow apparently, who came in with loads of energy for Leinster. I think he's performed really well and it's on merit that he's been selected by France. Good for him."

Given Rockwell-schooled Fogarty started at Munster (2000-02) and moved about himself playing at Connacht (2003-08) and Leinster (2008-10) maybe he just sees this as nothing new, more of the same.

After all moving provinces is regular enough, over the years, there have been players such as Stephen Keogh, Liam Toland, Steve McIvor, Bernard Jackman, Robbie Henshaw, James Downey, Felix Jones, Andrew Conroy, Jordi Murphy, Jack Aungier...

"You’ll know how your former club prep, for sure. You’ll say, 'This is what they’re going to do' during the week, and 'You need to do this, this and this.

"There is a bit of that. We watch each other so closely. We watch their club games, they watch our club games. You pick up on habits and there is a bit of tactics that goes on.

"But even still I would say that teams know each other intimately, we do here and which makes the weekend coming a brilliant contest."

Perhaps Ireland should be more concerned about the way this Saturday's referee is likely to interpret the front-row contest at scrum-time. Australia's Angus Gardner last refereed Ireland in July 2024 in Pretoria, a 20-27 defeat against South Africa.

Gardner wasn't too kind to the Ireland front-row (Porter-Sheehan-Furlong) that day while his back-up on Saturday, for some reason, are all English and comprise assistant referees Matthew Carrley, Christophe Ridley, TMO Ian Tempest and Foul Play Review Officer Andrew Jackson.

It has long been the view that English officials have the ones harshly penalising Andrew Porter at the scrum and indeed that was Ridley in the middle last week in Cardiff and who repeatedly pinged the Ireland scrum all through the first half.

Continues Fogarty: "We adapted a little bit at half-time, we got two scrum penalties in the second half, and like we said, we’re in a good place in terms of where we’re going with it.

"There is a bit of management around the bind to see pre-engage/not pre-engage, that has to be managed well. It takes two teams and a referee to do it.

"We will send some clips earlier in the week if we need to. Then we catch up with the referee on Thursday.

"You can show what you’re doing and it’s up to them then to take on what they want. I’m sure France will be doing the same thing.

"There is always communication with the referees. They hold the keys when it comes to penalties, so we want to make sure we’re working closely with them, and we are."

Sure France have Antoine Dupont, scored 11 tries as their backs ran amok last week, but there is an awful lot of talk about the front-tow ahead of this game isn't there?

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