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Seconds after France thrashed the Wallabies at Stade de France, my telephone rang. A friend who is an excellent judge of rugby teams and tactics exclaimed to me instantly over the phone, “How brilliant were the French.”
He was right, of course. Sometimes you have to concede your team was thrashed by a side that was much too good on the day.
This is what happened to the Wallabies. As the cliche has it, on this day (actually night, for the Test started at 9PM Paris time) a really terrific French side turned up to play.
You saw this in the opening phase, which went on for over three minutes, with the French keeping the ball in hand most of the time and attacking the Wallabies through the middle of the field. Within four minutes France was on the board with a penalty to Frederic Michalak.
The Wallabies pegged this lead back with a Mike Harris penalty. But then came an incident, or a series of incidents, that gave confidence to France and unsettled the Wallabies.
During the early minutes of play Nick Phipps had been chipping away at Nigel Owen, calling for penalties against the French in several rucks and mauls. Owens, correctly, gave him a dressing down, virtually telling him to shut up and just concentrate on playing the game rather than trying to referee it for him.
After a French onslaught on the Wallaby try line, minutes later, the Wallabies forced a scrum and a feed.
And what is this? A short arm penalty against the Wallabies for a crooked feed into the scrum.
The French feed, in my opinion, was also crooked. In fact, I instinctively yelled out to the television screen as the ball was being gently rolled behind the legs of the French props.
The French scrum system does not allow for the hooker to actually hook the ball. The system calls for the pack to shove over the ball. It is generally helped by cunning French halves rolling the ball into their own side of the scrum.
Whatever, the French scrum pushed the Wallabies backwards. The breakaway grabbed Dave Dennis and bound him into the shoving mass of forwards. Louis Picamoles, a giant of a number 8, picked the ball up and strolled across for a decisive, morale-lifting (for the French) and morale-shattering (for the Wallabies) try.
In a preview of the Test on The Roar I made the point that Owens had run foul of the ARU for his handling on a Test in Sydney against England. He penalised the Wallaby scrum incessantly. And sometimes he was right and sometimes, and this is the crucial point, he was wrong.
In my opinion, he did the same thing at Paris. A couple of the penalties he gave against the Wallaby scrum were not correct decisions. But in modern rugby, one of the skills of the game is being able to read the referee if he is inclined to give your team a hard time.
But this Test was lost by all sorts of other matters, rather than by the referee being unduly punitive on a particular side. The Wallabies missed far too many first-up tackles. A figure was given of 26 towards the end of the Test. There was little width or penetration to any of the attacks.
The Wallabies played the pick and drive game that worked quite well against the All Blacks at Brisbane, or well enough to give them a draw. But under the new five second ‘use it or lose it’ rule with ball at the back of rucks there is not enough time to set up the pick and drive repeatedly without exposing one of the runners to being isolated.
The French were able to absorb the pick and drive plays and then force a turn over time and time again. It’s worth noting that the French players have played all this season to the five second ‘use it or lose’ rule. This was the first game for the Wallabies.
Matters were helped either by Phipps’ poor clearances, which exposed the Wallaby runners to a punishing, and aggressive French defensive system.
Having said all this, the point has to be made once again that this was/is a very good French side, well-coached, well-selected and a good balance between young and older players. Wesley Fofana, for instance, looks to be a superstar in the makings with his speed and bulk.
The half-back combination between the inexperienced Maxime Machenaud and the old-timer Michalak, who first played for France 11 years ago, was very good, full of flair (with one searing break from Michalak leading to a try after he stood up Kurtley Beale) and steadiness.
The Wallabies now have to go to Twickenham and win to ensure that their place in the IRB world rankings top four is maintained by the end of the tour.
I thought England looked to be sharp and quick-witted in their 54-7 demolition of Fiji. Their scrum, from the very first scrum, was far too powerful for Fiji. And in general, so it seemed to me, there was a dash and speed about their play which was an improvement on most of their recent play.
Paul Ackford, The Sunday Telegraph’s (UK) rugby writer and a former England second-rower, also found “much to admire in their (England’s) performance… and there was a fizz and energy about them which bodes well for the difficult slogs against Australia, South Africa and New Zealand which will follow.”
But Ackford felt that “as an exercise in working out exactly where England stands ahead of their matches against the big three southern hemisphere nations, it was worthless.”
I’m not so sure. England showed they had a strong scrum, and the Wallaby scrum was exposed by France. And guess who is the referee at Twickenham? None other than Romain Poite, a Frenchman who handled the Wales – Argentina match well but who has sometimes had his issues with the Wallaby scrum.
England, too, played a strong ball-in-hand game against the Wallabies when they last played at Twickenham in 2010, scoring a rare length of the field try in the match. They look better prepared now to play with the ball in the hand now than they were two years ago.
This is written before the Scotland – New Zealand Test. My general impression of the northern hemisphere teams in the opening weekend of the festival of rugby is that they are better prepared to play attacking rugby than they were in the past. The coaching seems to be more sophisticated than in the past.
Also, the European players have all played some months of ‘use it or lose it’ and there is a snap and energy to their play (even Ireland and Wales, both of whom were beaten by the lacklustre Springboks and the impressive Pumas), with a general unwillingness to kick away ball repeatedly as they did in the past.
It is now up to the Wallabies to pick up their game after a poor display in Paris. There will be no excuses about the pitch at Twickenham, which was in splendid condition and a contrast to the sticky mud of Stade de France and the Millennium Stadium which, unfortunately, always seems to be wet even though it is an enclosed stadium.