IMANOL HARINORDOQUY had said before kick-off that the one thing no French rugby player wants is to leave Twickenham with triumphant English cries of “sorry, good game” echoing in his ears.
Yesterday, it was even worse than that: by half-time, France were staring a 60-point defeat in the face, according to their coach Marc Lievremont who had a shell-shocked look as he contemplated his worst result since his appointment in November, 2007.
France have not won away from home since Lievremont’s side travelled to Murrayfield for his opening match in charge last February and the high hopes raised by that dashing victory have dissipated into a miasma of questions.
“We spoke during the week about the need to put together two games at the level we managed against Wales and as you can see that wasn’t the case,” he said. “This is an enormous slap in the face.”
Between Gallic shrugs, Lievremont yesterday castigated his side while refusing to apportion individual blame. The French kicking game was “manna from Heaven for the English back three”; the catalogue of errors in the first minute leading to Mark Cueto’s try had allowed England to play “in a state of euphoria, in total confidence, and after that, we were never in the game”.
But Lievremont’s own selections will be questioned, particularly his decision to move Sebastien Chabal to the backrow to take on England in a slugging match, and to drop Fulgence Ouedraogo, France’s stand-out player against Wales. Chabal was outpaced in defence and outmuscled going forward, while a constant flow of errors meant the side had little ball to work with for the first 40 minutes.
The players’ mood was equally dark, with Thierry Dusautoir, usually one of the side’s linchpins in defence, taking responsibility for the defensive error that led to Cueto’s try – “I came up a bit too fast and left Sebastien Chabal exposed” – adding: “What’s disappointing was the collective acceptance of defeat in the first half. It makes you weep. It’s hard to find reasons.”
There will be soul-searching aplenty in France this week, but the only explanation Dusautoir could find was that his side are still unable to concentrate sufficiently to string together two decent performances in a row, in the worst tradition of the “unpredictable” French.
“We need to look on the mental side, because the team today was the same as against Wales and we tried to play in the same way, but we were not aggressive enough. It’s not a consistency thing, it’s even worse than that, a complete humiliation. My only explanation is that we didn’t turn up. Perhaps we did not get enough kicks in the backside to play well today. We are still little boys and need to be stung before we can produce a quality game.”
An editorial in the French newspaper L’Equipe yesterday morning spoke smugly about a dark mood in the British capital, one of “ambient spleen” amidst an economic crisis that, said the writer, had led traders to dub London “Reykjavik-on-Thames”, the implication being that English rugby was as bankrupt as the nation’s financial system.
But as Martin Johnson’s England frolicked like lambs in the spring sunshine, it was Les Bleus who looked in dire need of the oval ball’s equivalent of quantitative easing before travelling to Rome.
Guardian Service
