England coach Stuart Lancaster hails 'courageous' performance after his side narrowly misses out on Six Nations glory
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Stuart Lancaster hailed the character of his England side as they agonisingly missed out on the 2015 RBS 6 Nations title in a Twickenham classic.
Ireland claimed their first outright back-to-back titles since 1948-49 as England, needing a 26-point victory against France to snatch the championship, won a 12-try thriller 55-35.
England's highest-ever score against France saw them finish as runners-up with their points difference four better than Wales, who had romped to a 61-20 victory over Italy in Rome earlier in the day.
"I'm gutted really," England coach Lancaster told BBC One after failing to overtake an Ireland side who had beaten Scotland 40-10 at Murrayfield hours earlier.
"I said to the boys that's one of the most courageous performance I've seen from a team.
"To go down like we did and show the character to come back. It was an unbelievable game of rugby and it was desperately disappointing not to get that try at the end.
"We played some fantastic rugby and those two first tries from France hurt us but it will go down as one of the great games of rugby.
"Credit to Ireland for winning the championship, they beat us and congratulations to Joe (Schmidt) and all his team."
Player Ratings: England v France
Scrum-half Ben Youngs was named man-of-the-match after scoring two of England's seven tries.
"We really gave it a crack but for all the hard work and endeavour we showed you can't let them back in game," Youngs said.
"We started really well and positively but we gave away a couple of loose tries.
"We knew the French would tire as we saw that in previous games, but we gave ourselves too much to do in the end."
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