[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”4″]I[/su_dropcap]f you’re of a certain age, there’s a built-in trepidation of going to play France in Paris that might not be there for younger people. For a lot of people who might be getting a little thin on top and a little wide across the middle, there was a 30-year span where there were death, taxes and Ireland losing to France in the rugby.
Between 1980 and 2000, Ireland only managed to beat France twice in 22 games (1983 & 2000).
Between 2001 and 2011, Ireland managed three wins in 15 games (2001, 2003 and 2009).
Since 2011, however, France and Ireland have played nine times with Ireland only losing on one occasion. Yes, there are two draws in there from 2012 and 2013 but over the last decade. There are some people – young people, damn their hair and vigour – who only know a world where Ireland beat France most of the time.
Does it matter that Ireland’s decade of dominance over France has coincided with the worst French teams (both from a personnel and coaching perspective) in a generation? I mean, it matters, yeah. Whereas Ireland have been relatively stable and excellently coached for the last 10 years, France have bounced from bust-up to bust-up, experiment to experiment and style to style. That’s generally not been a problem for French rugby down through the years but you could say that the rise of systemic rugby in the early 2010s did not translate over very easily to the French national team. Even when France were in the doldrums for much of this decade, they still had the ability to produce a performance (or sometimes just a passage of play within a performance) that reminded us of the “France of old” before the “France of today” would inevitably run out of steam.
My pet theory is that the wage explosion in French club rugby from the late 2000s into the latter half of the 2010s created an environment where size (a natural component of French rugby) became an exaggerated part of their game. When you have money to spend, and the top French clubs had a lot of it, the easiest way to get quick results is to go big on your recruitment in the pack. Not just big as in the player’s status in the game, but in physical stature too – to literally sign the largest and best athletes you could to double down on the size advantage that is usually quite effective in producing winning rugby at club level.
That translated up to the test arena quite quickly to the point where you could be sure of a big, physical game against the French but only to a point where they could sustain their efforts across 80 minutes against elite opposition. The heavier the going, the more it suited France and it got to the stage a few years ago where France would be the ones praying for manky weather at the weekend rather than their opponents. Against Ireland in the last few years, heavy weather only helped the French which, if you followed Irish rugby in the 90s where Ireland would be the ones juggling chicken bones and sacrificing any animal in a five-mile radius to the god of Atlantic weather for a downpour that might level the playing field, that version of France was always a strange sight.
But in the last two years, there’s been a bit of a sea change. A succession of brilliant French u20 sides has produced a new core that France have rightly built around. The chopping and changing that defined the 2010s has mostly been put to one side in favour of doubling down on a young, cohesive and electrically talented French players that have already shown their value.
The France we came to know look to be gone and, in their place, there is a modern France under Fabien Galthié who look to have ironed out the faults of the last decade by blending hot young talents like Dupont, Ntamack, Jalibert, Chat and others with established senior quality like Vakatawa, Willemse, Le Roux and Ollivon.
They will provide an imposing challenge for Ireland this Saturday where a bonus-point win will secure us a Championship but a win for either side will keep them in play depending on what England do in Rome. It’s set up to be a seismic encounter.
France: 15. Anthony Bouthier, 14. Vincent Rattez, 13. Virimi Vakatawa, 12. Arthur Vincent, 11. Gael Fickou, 10. Romaine Ntamack, 9. Antoine Dupont; 1. Cyril Baille, 2. Julien Marchand, 3. Mohamed Haouas, 4. Bernard Le Roux, 5. Paul Willemse, 6. François Cros, 7. Charles Ollivon (c), 8. Gregory Aldritt
Replacements: 16. Camille Chat, 17. Jean-Baptiste Gros, 18. Demba Bamba, 19. Romain Taofifénua, 20. Dylan Cretin, 21. Baptise Serin, 22. Arthur Retière, 23. Thomas Ramos
Last weekend against Italy, Ireland only box kicked twice.
I think it’s almost inevitable that we’ll see much, much more of this tactic over the coming weekend. That will be for two reasons – first, the French back three didn’t cover themselves in glory under the high ball or from a wide coverage perspective against Wales last weekend in my opinion so there is value in attacking that part of their game.
But you don’t box kick against France just to possibly win the ball back, you kick to frustrate and run them. Wales handled France quite well in the opening quarter last weekend and a lot of that came down to their smart box kicking and exiting.
In the Six Nations so far, France have scored 38% of their tries in the first 20 minutes of games so any tactic that denies them early momentum and forces them into a game where they are shuttling up and down the field in 30-metre increments to reset defensively and offensively after box kicks is a sound strategy and that’s before we get to the likelihood that Bouthier, Rattez and Fickou, in particular, can be rattled by any box kick that they have to run onto.
We can expect that all three of that French backline will spill at least one ball or lose an aerial duel but they don’t have to lose any of the kicks for this tactic to be successful. If they take every contestable box kick, it’ll still be good for Ireland because if we can pin France behind their own 10m line through the boot, we can defend them on our terms. We want our primary defensive hitters – Ryan, Connors, Doris, etc – to be most aggressive here so that France have to worry about conceding jackal penalties to the likes of Aki, Stander, Porter and Beirne in kickable positions. This will serve two purposes in running France’s pack early in the game, denying them positon and forcing them to kick back to us.
Essentially, I think we want to mortgage our early Q1/Q2 possession to get France into a game they don’t really want to play, at least early in the game. When France are resetting under a box kick, they are not building momentum and they will kick the ball back long to Stockdale/Conway/Keenan to tempt us into moving off-script on an ill-judged transition counter-attack. They have the most long-kicks in the tournament and they use it to unbalance the opposition and open up counter-transitions.
Instead, the smart play is to look for a central position on the run back and kick to pin.
In a central ruck position, a team that uses a lot of line speed, like France under Shaun Edwards, are not able to blitz as effectively because both sides of the ruck are a realistic carry option but the behaviour of the winger is still relatively predictable. Wherever the ball goes, the ball side winger will step up and the off-ball winger will drop back as their backfield – usually Ntamack and Bouchier – rotate around to cover the space.
Check out this sequence from a central position to get an idea of how the French primary line works. There are 13 defenders in the primary line (including three in the ruck).
With Fickou defending on the left-wing for this game, there could well be a little more space behind him than would be there with a specialist winger.
Fickou is bigger and heavier than a regular winger so he will have to make his decisions on when to advance into the primary line earlier. If he does, the French backfield rotation will have to cover slightly more space in the backfield behind Fickou than normal because he is advancing earlier and is slower on the stop and turn.
This can give Sexton (or Murray, or Stockdale) a lane to kick deep into the French half with offensive winger pressure attacking Bouchier’s covering line to prevent a counter and, ideally, scrag and drag him into touch for an easy gain.
There is an inherent risk in giving France a lot of lineouts – 53% of their scores in this year’s Six Nations have come directly from the lineout and, of those tries, 60% have been from the first phase. Our defensive lineout can be an important factor in stymying their midfield launches but I feel the effectiveness of Connors as a midfield tackler off the lineout will be a huge factor in this game.
We have a game that can slowly move us away from France on the scoreboard as long we approach the game with an approach that doesn’t let France into the contest early. We don’t want to kick long to them, we don’t want to concede metres off first phase and we have to ensure we can stop Ntamack from getting his hands free inside the French 10m line because they will go for inside offloads if he’s not decisively stopped.
Our team selection looks like one that’s built to pin France in and frustrate them defensively. I think we have a breakdown game that can really reward our box kicking but it’ll only fully work if our scrum can live with the pressure France will bring. If we can do that, play smart and take our opportunities when they arrive (France tend to concede a fair bit in the last 20 minutes) we have the tools to do the job. If we start conceding central linebreaks on kick transition and allow France to surge around the corner on us, we will lose and lose hard.
It’s all to play for.
