Berbizier barbs add to pressure on Laporte to deliver

Six Nations Championship/ Italy v France:It seems remarkable that the coach of the World Cup hosts, entering his eighth RBS Six Nations campaign and having led France to the title in three of the last five years, is once again in the firing line.

Yet his compatriot and Italian counterpart, Pierre Berbizier, would not have been a lone dissenting voice when he launched an eye-raising broadside at his French counterpart, Bernard Laporte, this week.

For all their disparate talents, France look devoid of palpable direction.

While New Zealand are capable of embarrassing anybody, the safety-first, maul-it-or-kick-it tactics sheepishly employed in the 47-3 and 23-11 defeats to the All Blacks in November appeared almost sacrilegious in the context of France's glorious rugby heritage.

Furthermore, Laporte is entering the climactic end of a second four-year tilt at the Coupe du Monde, on home soil, and yet by his own admission is still barely two-thirds toward compiling a 30-man squad for the World Cup.

More damningly, France are still in the dark as to the spine of their team, namely numbers eight, nine, 10 and 15.

Laporte and his selectors gave the French team an infusion of youth, admittedly injury enforced in several places, when they won the Six Nations three years ago. But when push comes to shove, Laporte seems not to trust younger players, his instinct invariably being to resort to the old guard, the likes of Pieter de Villiers (34), Serge Betsen (32), Thomas Castaignede (31), Rafael Ibanez (34), Olivier Magne (33), Sylvain Marconnet (30) and Fabien Pelous (33).

All of them will have another year to their names come the World Cup, yet all were recalled at various junctures during last season's Six Nations, and it's not as if France's rugby structures wrap these warriors in cotton wool.

So it was that speaking in L'Équipe on Monday, Berbizier questioned Laporte's ability to lead France to World Cup success, as Aimé Jacquet did when he led the French football team to glory in 1998 on home soil.

"There was the 'Jacquet effect' back then. I do hope that France will be crowned world champions but, like many people, I have my doubts. Do we really know what we are doing? We know that there is a World Cup coming up and many people believe that because it takes place in France, it's going to be like in 1998. The only conviction I have about this World Cup is that it will be a great popular success in the country," Berbizier wrote.

He also criticised Laporte's management of the team during the 2003 World Cup - where France were beaten in the semi-finals by England - and most recently in November.

"The players are not the priority whereas the coach is at the heart of the problems. The right questions are not raised. In 2003, France had a great forward line capable of destroying all our rivals but we lost our strength in the most important moments. We talked too much and did not work enough and in the end we lost the World Cup.

"Without being envious of Bernard Laporte," the former French scrumhalf and coach added a tad unconvincingly, "I have never seen so many resources put at the French team's disposal. I would have liked to have as many back in 1995. But being given all the existing resources to be a success is one thing, using them properly is another."

In the face of all this, Laporte appears as if he's trying to buy himself time.

"Of course the Six Nations is important but we are thinking of the World Cup in France," he reiterated at the recent Six Nations launch in London, "and we need to see as many players as possible from the pool of players we have in the Six Nations to see who is going to be playing in the World Cup."

Laporte is in part the victim of French structures, although a groundbreaking new deal with the clubs has ensured the Top 14 will go into hibernation during the Six Nations.

"The important thing is to be able to play over seven weeks with the 40 players we have, and that they do not have any club matches in that period," said Laporte.

"It is, perhaps, not a short-term advantage but possibly it is good if a player is a bit tired, he can rest, and if there is a player who needs to play, he can play. So over the seven weeks we have a better overview of the squad."

No team looms on Ireland's horizon in 2007 quite like France - historic first visitors to Croke Park and opponents in the pool stages of the World Cup - and with France there is always the fear they'll turn up inspired on any given day, à la when derailing Ireland's Grand Slam ambitions in Lansdowne Road two years ago.

Laporte has openly targeted their Dublin trek as the make-or-break game in France's Six Nations campaign: "I think if we want to be the favourites for the Six Nations this year, we have two away matches, one in Italy and one in Ireland, and we need to win both."

For the moment, Berbizier's critique of Laporte adds an intriguing subplot to tomorrow's opening match in Rome.

"The pressure is limited because there is a presidential election in France," quipped Laporte at the Six Nations launch, "so that is maybe more important than rugby. Certainly there will be a lot of pressure from the southwest of France. But rugby is not a national sport in France. I opened Le Figaro this morning and they didn't talk about the rugby."

Breaking into English for the first time at the conclusion of his press conference at the Six Nations launch, Laporte commented: "After this event, I think the next-biggest event in France is rugby." And nobody knows that better than Laporte.