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4 hours ago
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It’s never a good sign when the place is crawling with French supporters. They gather in knots along pavements around the stadium, yakking away, disrupting pedestrian traffic, lost in the enjoyment of a sunny Six Nations day in Dublin. Worse still is when you climb to the dizzy height of the press box in the Aviva Stadium and survey a scene where there is lots of blue. Then they start to sing. Not good.
Some of the darkest days in Ireland’s rugby history came with the away leg in this fixture. When on one occasion the front page of L’Équipe read “Le Massacre du Printemps” we learned to associate sunshine in Paris with pain and recrimination. That was the preview, not the match report.
You could say the most recent battering started on Friday night, in the incessant rain at Cork’s Musgrave Park. That’s where France’s Under-20s gave a preview of Saturday afternoon. At one stage they were reduced to 12 men – their discipline was rank – and still it barely slowed them down.
Their seniors play the same way: power first, but with a bit of dexterity when required, followed by the kind of gas that wins medals in sprint events. Oh, and a goalkicker for good measure.
Add it all up and the chances were good of France being virtually impossible to live with, at which point they released the mad dogs in defence. Shaun Edwards has had his fingerprints on a host of great rearguard actions across the continent of Europe. From Wasps at club level, ushering him into defence coaching roles with Wales and France in the international game, his version of space invaders has been winning games for 25 years.
How his players kept showing up for work against Ireland, when the stats were screaming that the tank was near empty, is a cause for celebration in France. Is it credible they will fall so far from such a great height in the space of a week, when playing at home with a Six Nations championship on the line?
The evidence in favour of success is stacked. Their combination of brutality and speed mitigates the loss of Antoine Dupont, gone after half an hour against Ireland and confirming on Sunday that he has ruptured cruciate ligaments in a knee, for they can hit the high notes when it comes to clinical finishing. Twice on Saturday they battered Ireland for the hosts’ misfortune in having men put in the bin. It was like a reminder flashing on the big screen: numbers are up, time to put the resistance down. True, there was serendipity in the yellow card for Calvin Nash coinciding with the schedule for rolling thunder off the bench. The arrival of the reinforcements has never been so effective. Game over, almost wiping from the memory that a gripping Test match had kicked off an hour earlier.
The reaction in Dublin mostly touched two bases: headlines heaping praise on France for having so many strings to their bow just now, and an increase in volume for talk that this Ireland side are over the hill. As the French players were lingering on the pitch to acknowledge their legion of fans there was a scene unfolding not far away, featuring Ireland’s most capped player, Cian Healy. Along with Conor Murray and Peter O’Mahony, the loosehead prop was having his final run in green at this venue. The only part of the script that had gone according to plan was his introduction for the last 10 minutes, in which he managed to score a try. Fast forward to 20 minutes after the final whistle and Healy was rolling around on the ground, wrestling with his two kids. It looked as if he wasn’t sure who might come out on top.
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Waving goodbye to three players at the same time, on the back of such a shellacking, is an image hard to shake. So while Andy Farrell is running around on Lions duty, he must be struggling to block out the flashing sign telling him to hit the reset button for Ireland. The mood music here on that one is sombre, funereal almost, probably because the hope was to carry out the refit with a grand slam pennant – what would have been a unique second in three seasons – hanging on the wall. So Farrell and assistant Simon Easterby have their hands full. They will be grateful that we are mid-range in the World Cup cycle and not looking forward to that event in the autumn.
We are taught in this jurisdiction to worship the Six Nations, which pays the bills, and not jump the gun with thoughts of what happens in every fourth year, which is fine. But there is nothing worse than looking ahead a matter of months to a World Cup knowing your best game is behind you. That was the case with Joe Schmidt when he wrapped up a dismal Championship in 2019, five months out from the World Cup in Japan. Naturally enough that’s not how he articulated it at the time, but it was the unavoidable conclusion when reviewing the wreckage of that tournament.
So will France worry that they have scaled such a peak of excellence so far ahead of Australia 2027? That’s where their under-20s come in. We don’t know how many French fans managed to take in both games over the weekend: dramatically different conditions but the story was the same.
