Noves hails 'ferocious' France
The home side, who scraped a 23-21 win over Italy in their tournament opener last week, had looked out of the match for large periods against a defence-driven Irish side plagued by injury.
Jonathan Sexton kicked three first-half penalties to one from Jules Plisson and France looked nowhere near a threat to the Irish for the first hour of the match at a packed Stade de France.
But a raft of replacements galvanised the French and Maxime Machenaud played in Maxime Medard for a 70th-minute try Plisson converted for what seemed like an improbable victory.
"I was not very happy about the content of the game and the players understood that at half-time," said Noves, who left Toulouse to take over France from Philippe Saint-Andre after the World Cup.
"It was very interesting for us to play against Ireland, they're a good team and posed lots of problems for us.
"The difference came just at the end."
The key moment of the match arguably came when Noves brought on prop 
duo Rabah Slimani and Eddy Ben Arous, consolidating the French scrum and offering a base for Machenaud to inject some life into what had been until then a pedestrian, toothless attack.
Three times spurning an easily kickable penalty, France opted to scrum in front of the Irish posts and the strategy eventually paid off with Medard's hammer blow try.
"They took the touch, there were the scrums and then the beautiful try!" beamed Noves.
"I said to them [at half-time] to work on their defence. This team can win more matches. They showed in the second half that they have a ferocious will to impose their own game and not allow Ireland to impose theirs.
"Like last week, this victory feels good. But what worries me is above all the content and not the victory per se.
"The victory is good, obviously. What they did between the 30th minute and the end of the game, if we add that to last week's sequences and the state of mind we're in now, then we're on the right path.
"The whole squad deserves this victory. We've had a good week, had a full debriefing on last week's mistakes and the players were focused on them to make it better this week.
"Last week, the players were fragile in terms of defence, but they were better today. If we take last week's attack with today's state of mind, we're not quite there, but we're well on the way."
Next up for France is a trip to Cardiff's Principality Stadium to play Wales on Friday, February 26.
Ireland must lick their wounds before travelling to Twickenham to face a resurgent England.
Agence France-Presse
