We should be listening to the unmistakeable sound of cockerels coming home to roost in French club rugby. With English clubs more in control of their professional chariot, this was to be the year the scales tipped. By the time the European Cup and European Conference semi-finals came around, no Frenchman would be able to ignore the winds of change howling across the Channel.
Wrong. An overpowering cloud of Gauloises will surround the semifinal grounds this weekend, with only Bath and Newcastle on hand to penetrate the haze. French clubs have won both previous European Cups and can boast three of the four remaining contenders this year. In last year's Conference they provided seven of the eight quarter-finalists; this time a mere five. Like Asterix, they continue to protect their magic potion from all invaders.
The Brive-Pontypridd saga, laden with cultural misunderstanding, has proved a diversion. So has the national team's collapse at the Parc against the Springboks. Instead, in the towns and villages, the church bells are still summoning up a brand of all-for-one esprit de corps which, of the top English clubs, only Gloucester might recognise.
The French can churn out battlehardened teams, combining fierce local pride and muscular youth. Take Pau, no small south-west farming village this. With a population of around 140,000, including the suburbs, it is a prosperous place, a favourite winter retreat in the mid19th century for wealthy Englishmen who introduced fox hunting and golf to the region.
There are tell-tale hunting prints on the walls of the town's main hotel and off-field efforts are still made to welcome English visitors. Only last month, after Leicester's quarterfinal trip to the Pyrenees, the BBC's Alastair Hignell innocently asked the name of the complimentary digestif in front of him; on leaving the restaurant, a full bottle was pressed into his hand.
Harlequins' players encountered similar warmth in Toulouse the same weekend when a group of them were feted in the city centre bar run by hooker Patrick Soula. The fact they had just been steam-rollered by one of the great club performances that afternoon was irrelevant. Contrast with Bath, who departed straight for the M4 after losing to Saracens last weekend. French experience, at club level at least, suggests old-fashioned bonding can bear fruit in the mineral water era.
It would be churlish to ignore the darker side; Pau's bloody scrap with Llanelli was T-bone stuff compared to the onfield mince of Brive and Pontypridd. Yet any preoccupation with guerilla warfare invariably gives way to grand, sweeping oratory when the big stage looms.
"I'll ask my team to aim for maximum pleasure and have no regrets . . . by that I mean to feel free to try `tricks' on the pitch and play the way they want," said Brive coach Laurent Seigne this week.
Few sum up the French club experience better than Gregory Kacala, the Pole in Cardiff's pack who helped Brive to the European Cup in January. "There was a collective madness unique to that team," recalled Kacala. "We were like tiny ants attacking a far greater insect. One wouldn't manage to haul him down but together we could overcome anyone."
Watch and learn, then, from players like Nicolas Brusque, the Pau full-back who would walk into any other Five Nations side. Bath and Newcastle may endure this weekend but don't put your chemise on either winning a trophy. Their rivals remain formidable, in anyone's language.
