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Why Lievremont is the Charlie Sheen of rugby

Roar Guru
15th March, 2011
16

Rugby doesn’t often crowd out football news in France unless the national team wins the Grand Slam, but there were headlines all over the country on Sunday regarding les Bleus.

After they lost to wooden spooners Italy in Rome, L’Equipe and Le Journal du Dimanche called it a total failure and intolerable. Coach Marc Lievremont lost it himself.

In a furious rant at the top of his voice, he called his team a bunch of cowards and traitors and said that there would be wholesale sackings.

The outburst has destroyed whatever cachet Lievremont had with his men, and all of France is calling for him to be replaced, except French Rugby Federation chief Pierre Camou, who says he’s sticking with him through to the World Cup.

This has caused a further outcry from French fans who fear that not only is the season over for les tricolores, but the whole rest of the year, too.

Morale has never been worse. Winger Maxime Medard told journalists that if he had a rope he’d hang himself, and fly half Trinh-Duc baldly stated that France does not have a team capable of winning the World Cup.

Everybody knows that but their playmaker isn’t supposed to say it.

Now they have to somehow get up for an unfamiliar night game on Saturday against rampant Wales. And not in Cardiff where it would be easier for the French, but at the Stade de France, where angry fans will be waiting to crucify team and coach alike.

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In an older time, when somebody was as insulting as Lievremont was to his men, his face would be slapped and a duel fought. These days we’re more civilized, but a lot of French would like to turn the clock back a couple of hundred years.

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