The Wales captain, Sam Warburton, missed the post-match dinner, held at a five-star hotel in the centre of Paris, so he could receive immediate attention on a knee injury that forced him off the field in the second half.
Warburton suffered the injury in the opening minutes of the second half. He tried to run it off but his right knee started to swell and he came off for an ice-pack to be put on it, a procedure he followed every two hours through the night and meant he could not go to the dinner.
“We do not know yet how serious Sam’s injury is,” said the Wales head coach, Warren Gatland. “I hope it is not too bad but we will know more in the morning.”
The fly-half Dan Biggar also left the field prematurely having taken a blow on the hip but he is expected to be fit for the match against Ireland in two weeks.
Gatland is hoping Ireland beat England in Dublin on Sunday and put the men in red in contention for the title, something that looked unlikely after their opening-round collapse to England.
Wales’s hopes rest on the contenders all going into the final weekend having lost one match and Gatland said he was confident his team could defeat Ireland despite having beaten them in Cardiff only twice since 1983.
“Ireland do not make a lot of mistakes but they do not play a huge amount of rugby,” said Gatland. “They have strong set pieces and a driving lineout and they are good in the air. We have to make sure we cope with those while producing the rugby we are capable of.
“People wrote us off after the second half against England when they slowed the game down and strangled it, but we played a lot of rugby against France and were strong at forward.
“We are back in contention, but we need the game in Dublin to go our way. It was a fourth consecutive victory over France and we are growing and maturing as a team.”
That cannot be said for France who are set for a fourth straight bottom-half finish in the table. When it was announced that their after-match media conference would be preceded by a statement from the team manager, Jo Maso, there was speculation that the reign of the head coach, Philippe Saint-André, could be about to end.
Maso’s statement had nothing to do with the match but was about a book making allegations of drug-taking in French rugby in the 1980s. Saint-André said he would battle on, saying in one breath his team should have won, and lamenting the lack of basic skills in another. It was Les Bleus’ 19th defeat in 35 Tests under him.
