Amee-Leigh Costigan felt Ireland needed to make more of Gabrielle Vernier's red card during their opening 27-15 defeat by France in the Women's Six Nations.

The visiting centre opened the scoring with an early try at Kingspan Stadium but was shown a 20-minute red in the second half.

Ireland were 17-5 behind at the time of the 27-year-old's high tackle on Eve Higgins but Neve Jones' maul try from the resulting kick to the corner made it a one-score game.

The hosts would not score again, however, until after France were restored to 15 players.

Scott Bemand's side did cut the gap to just two points with 14 minutes left but France pulled away again in the closing stages.

"Getting different outcomes when they have a red card, like what should we look at and how can we get points on the board with that?" said Costigan when asked what the side must learn from the defeat.

The wing, who described captaining the side for a first time as "such an honour", felt there were elements of the performance to build upon going into their round two fixture against Italy in Parma on 30 March.

"After a big training build up towards this first game, I think we'll take the learnings, improve on them, and then have a look at Italy and see where we want to attack," she added.

"We've seen what we can do, but we really do want more and just to push on with that."