France 21 - 16 Wales

Wales' hopes of back-to-back grand slams and equalling and then exceeding the continuous games winning streak record came to a shuddering, but still glorious, halt last night.

Predicting the outcome of games against France is always tricky... and yesterday showed just why. France were in disarray with no recognised goal kicker (which showed), a crash centre trying to play the touch position of first five-eighth (which showed in some respects) and so on.

As with last week with England, there was a plan to try and stop the Welsh three-quarters firing. It was different to last week's plan, but even more effective. Unlike last week, there was also a plan to deal with Wales' defensive alignments and the likes of Heymans were more than capable of exploiting the gaps created by their interior players. Then there was Harinordiqy, who doesn't always play well, but yesterday was immense, unbelievably immense. Powell, who didn't have a bad game in terms of runs, tackles, covering play etc. was completely eclipsed on the night by his opposite number. Given Powell is probably going to get a Lions invitation in the summer, high praise indeed. In fact, after last night when he had a good game even when his opposite number was playing probably the best game of his life, just makes him more likely I'd think.

The slightly worrying thing? Wales failed to have a Plan B available and executable. Plan A, to the TV audience at least, was clearly not working - so where was Plan B? I can't believe it looked like Plan A was working on the field either and failing to adapt to that, particularly when there had been a 13-3 lead, is criminal.

France clearly wanted it more on the night. But, in the process will they make Wales a strong side for the next year or two? Learning how to cope with defeats like this should be part of the building of any great team. It happens to all great teams (think NZ in the RWC) so it's not a disaster as long as they can learn from it and go forward with confidence.