Guinness Six Nations 2024: France v ScotlandVenue: Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh Date: Saturday, 10 February Kick-off: 14:15 GMTCoverage: Live on BBC One, BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra, BBC Radio Scotland Extra & live text on the BBC Sport website and app
The one thing to know about Fabien Galthie’s team is that they are a very, very proud bunch of Frenchmen, a group that’s hurting having just been humiliated on their home patch.
A big, ugly bear has been poked with a huge stick and it’s now heading for Edinburgh. They know that if they lose to Scotland on Saturday then their Six Nations is over. Pride is on the line.
It’s a cultural thing with French rugby. I saw it in every club I played with and against, and it’s more relevant to France than anywhere else, I think. When you’re embarrassed in front of your own fans, you’d better react.
The French rugby public have gone nuts since Friday’s loss to Ireland. They have gone through the coaches and the players. It’s been unsparing.
Those fans will demand that France take no prisoners at Murrayfield. This is what’s coming.
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The quality of the rugby has been top drawer in the Galthie years. There’s been a high winning percentage, the team has been rejuvenated by a new and exciting generation of players.
The World Cup was a massive blow. The first huge setback and in the build-up to the Ireland game it was still what people were talking about.
‘Have the players recovered psychologically and physically?’ ‘Are they ready to win the title?’
And then they got blown off the field in Marseille.
They conceded four tries, or more, for the second game on the bounce with Shaun Edwards as defence coach. That hasn’t happened very often. They looked bereft of ideas. The line-out got picked apart.
France were demolished 38-17 at home to Ireland on week one
The public wants to understand why this happened and everybody is getting it in the neck. There’s a context to all of this, though. The performance against Ireland was awful but I’m not sure the scale of the flak is entirely fair.
Ireland were the worst possible team to start against. They had huge disappointment of their own at the World Cup and they’re still one of the best teams on the planet. They were always going to be dangerous, even if France were a settled crew, but they weren’t.
Huge changes have been made in the way this team is being prepared. Galthie is still the head of everything, but much of his backroom staff have gone. Thibault Giroud, the head of performance and conditioning, has left for Bordeaux. Kharim Ghezal has gone to Stade Francais as forwards coach. Christian Labit has also gone to Stade as head coach.
Influential people have been ripped out. Galthie has had two weeks with the new staff. There’s a new line-out calling system under Laurent Sempere, the former Stade hooker. Ireland laid waste to that new line-out.
After the World Cup the Irish lads got rested and rotated and got eased into the new season. The French boys went back to their clubs and have pretty much started every game since then.
I’m not sure they’ve had a chance to mentally digest what happened to them at the World Cup and, physically, they’ve been on the hamster wheel ever since.
France had glaring lineout problems in their loss to Ireland
All of that came together in a really messy affair in Marseille. Fans demand success but there’s been a lack of compassion for what has gone on behind the scenes. All the changes, the loss of Antoine Dupont and Romain Ntamack, the red card for Paul Willemse.
Maxime Lucu played at nine instead of Dupont. Lucu is an absolute competitor, terrific week-in, week-out for Bordeaux. He’s been criticised very heavily. The reality is that Dupont at his very best wouldn’t have made a difference because France were completely beasted in every facet.
Loads of line-outs robbed, no front-foot ball, an incredibly well-drilled Ireland team playing at the top of their game. Everybody is having a go at Lucu but it’s not his fault that France had no go-forward ball, that his scrum was under-powered with seven men, a predicament that saw him trying to operate behind a pack that was going backwards. No quick ball, no opportunity to play.
Dupont would have been irrelevant. Too much went wrong. Ireland were too good. They pulled France’s pants down.
Which brings us back to Murrayfield on Saturday. The same things apply – this is a France team with new coaches trying to bed-in and new systems which haven’t yet settled. It’s a French team that’s played a lot of rugby already this season, a French team now missing not just Dupont and Ntamack, but also the excellent Thibauld Flament, the gigantic Emmanuel Meafou and Willemse, who’s suspended.
But I go back to the bear that’s been poked with a big stick. They’ll arrive in Edinburgh without some world class players who helped make them Grand Slam champions in 2022, but they’ll be carrying some amount of fury with them. Proud players, these. The backlash is coming.
Johnnie Beattie was talking to BBC Scotland’s Tom English
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