Right now, I’m Tiger fishing on the Zambezi, and yet on Saturday night, 8,000 miles away in Paris, it will be Le Coq who will be hoping to peck and bring down some Springboks to avenge the World Cup quarter-final loss. It was a result that cut them to the core.
In South Africa, for all the quality possessed by a spirited English renaissance and Ireland’s perpetual belligerence, it is Les Bleus who the rugby public fear most, so the result against Fabien Galthie’s men will be keenly watched. They will be a true measure of whether Rassie can take some of his Dependables all the way to Australia or jettison them as Expendables with land visible in the distance.
All games are physical, but I think there’s an added edge, and even some needle to this particular game. The Stade de France will bring back all the emotions for the home team. I will never forget Antoine Dupont’s thousand-yard stare at the end of that game. The dream had died in the most excruciating fashion with bodies clad in blue strewn over the patchwork green quilt of a pitch, while the Boks, exhausted, raised their hands aloft.
Tests of time – Episode 1 | Trailer | RPTV
The 2023 Rugby World Cup quarter final between New Zealand and Ireland will forever be remembered as an all time classic. Episode one of Tests of Time looks into what made that night so special. Watch now on RugbyPass TV.
Tests of time – Episode 1 | Trailer | RPTV
The 2023 Rugby World Cup quarter final between New Zealand and Ireland will forever be remembered as an all time classic. Episode one of Tests of Time looks into what made that night so special. Watch now on RugbyPass TV.
This summer, due to Top 14 commitments and some opting to regenerate after an attritional season, they rested a glut of their front liners for the three Tests in New Zealand. Dupont was injured, while Toulouse’s Thomas Ramos, Anthony Jelonch and Romain Ntamack were involved in wrestling the Bouclier de Brennus out of Jalibert, Penaud and Bielle-Biarrey’s hands, and they were France-lite.
This is the first time they will get the band back together again – deploying the men who thought they could win a home World Cup. They will be fired up in the dressing room saying, ‘not on our watch again’, and it will be a huge motivation. France can get a serious psychological boost by beating the World Champions.
France
South Africa
The fact that Fabien has made them watch Chasing the Sun just again highlights how much that quarter-final meant to that group, the coaches and to the nation. They get a chance to stake a claim and get some form of retribution. To my mind, however, there’s quite a bit of pressure on them to perform.
I’ll be interested to see if there are any barbs before the game between Rassie and Fabien, because they are the two most experienced coaches in the Autumn Nations Series and they will try and wind each other up. Rassie went early naming his squad against the Wallabies for the game at Ellis Park and it bit him on the behind, so he may be more cautious this time out.
France have a wonderful opportunity to play England and Ireland at home in the Six Nations, so a win on Saturday sets them up to be one of the favourites for the World Cup.
Having coached in France, I can promise you, they play in a different way to any other side. There is an unpredictability to them. They don’t think in an Anglo-Saxon way. I know it’s a cliché, but you never know what you’re going to get and sometimes you wonder if even they know what’s coming next. Fabien, to his credit, has tried to instil more pragmatism and consistency in selection, but they still make curveball choices. Ironically, it’s Rassie who has almost been French in his selection of late, making 8, 9 or 10 changes for that second Test out in Wellington and obliterating the All Blacks. Those wholesale changes were par for the course for France 10 or 15 years ago.
It’s a stadium I know well. I remember going there with the Boks in 2006 and we lost to a late Freddie Michalak intercept. The boys were despondent in the changing room afterwards and I said to them, ‘we are going to come back here and we are going to celebrate winning a World Cup next October. I promise you’. And we did. I told those boys I’d take them with me to the World Cup and we’d end up with a smile on our faces. On Saturday, if France have their tails up, it will be some cauldron. For any team to lift the Webb Ellis Cup, they will have to beat one of those to win. That’s my prediction.
For France, even more than the Springboks, this is make or break in terms of where they’re going to be in two years. Ahead of the World Cup draw, the teams will be starting to think about Australia.
It’s funny, when I got hold of the team in 2004, they had come off the back of a deflating tournament at the 2003 World Cup, bombing out in the quarter-finals. One of the things that the players said to me was that they were based in Perth and were demolished against England, it felt like they weren’t in a country holding the World Cup. Western Australia, back then, wasn’t renowned for being rugby mad. Whereas for 2007, we were based in Paris, we went to the opening ceremony and the feel-good factor was there. My point is that there will be a massive difference to the atmosphere depending on where you’re based. If you’re in Adelaide or Brisbane, it will have a big bearing on the atmosphere. Of course, there are other variables, like your opposition but given its size, it’s like a mini-United States with regard to the favourite sports in states.
One thing the French have done, when they beat the All Blacks in Cardiff in 2007, is conjure up some amazing wins on the road. In 2011, they were a cigarette paper from winning the World Cup in New Zealand, and if it’s not the Springboks or All Blacks, Les Bleus may finally strike for the Northern Hemisphere to lift their first World Cup. For the neutral, that would be incroyable.