Flamboyant French puzzle ahead of Wallabies tussle

Just a few days before Ewen McKenzie names his Wallabies squad to face France next month, most of us are still conducting pained internal squabbles about who’s going to be trotting out wearing green and gold at Suncorp on June 7.

How many of those maverick magicians can or should he squeeze into the backline? Who the hell props up the scrum? How do you solve a problem like an out-of-nick Queenslander? Do you pick a captain and then a team or vice versa?

If you’ve got through that paragraph with a hair left on your head and your nails not chewed to the quick, I salute you.

Thankfully, those aren’t our decisions to make, but it won’t stop us having our tuppence worth, eh.

In the meantime, what of their opponents? Philippe Saint-André has sifted through the foreign stars that litter the Top 14 and named a squad of 31 Frenchmen to head Down Under.

Hopefully, when you think of French rugby, you think of the Stade de France packed to the rafters, a chorus of Allez les Bleus ringing round and a genuine European heavyweight.

Hopefully you think of the so-called Gallic Flair, la joie de vivre and wondrous three-quarter play. You’ll remember Philippe Sella, Serge Blanco and Thomas Castaignede flinging it wide, running from deep and generally being more extravagant than the love-child of a pair of Gatsby spats and a Cristiano Ronaldo rabona.

French rugby, so the story goes, is maddening. It’s mercurial, it’s adventurous. Nick Cummins managed in a word what I couldn’t in about a hundred when he simply described them as the “flamboyant French”.

Good ol’ Honey Badge, for mine, is one of few nailed-on Wallaby starters for that game in Brisbane. But I don’t think the French he’ll be lining up against will be all that flamboyant.

Considering Saint-André the player was the sort of wizard of a winger that gave rise to such poetic perceptions of French rugby, Saint-André the coach leads a more plodding era, favouring a heavy-duty, pack-based game.

So far, it’s not been a terribly successful strategy. Take a look at the cold, hard facts and you’ll find the French in a rut that extends as far back as their stumble to the World Cup final of 2011.

They haven’t won the Six Nations since a Grand Slam in 2010, and 2014 was the third consecutive Championship that they’ve finished in the bottom half. Twelve months earlier they took home their first wooden spoon since five became six in 2000.

Indeed, 2013 saw them win just two – against Scotland and Tonga in Paris – of their 13 games.

Since they last played the Wallabies – and won, as it happens – in November 2012, there’s barely been a scintillating individual run to celebrate, let alone a run of wins. Saint-André hasn’t picked the same team in back-to-back Tests, has dished out more than 21 debuts in his first 18 games and still appears no closer to finding his first XV.

There are a myriad of reasons for this woeful run.

These are the ones in the players and management’s control: that madcap selection policy, on-field indiscipline and some hair-brained decision-making.

There’s the fixture list – four of those 2013 defeats came against the unbeaten All Blacks – the first of which in Auckland sapped morale like the first pimple on a teenager’s snout. But there’s also the Top 14, which is decreasingly a training paddock for Frenchmen of pedigree than a cash-rich retirement stable for imported thoroughbreds.

In the key decision-making positions, top clubs favour foreigners over Frenchmen; of the 106 props on rosters, just 45 are French; and at fly-half, Messrs Jonny Wilkinson, Luke McAllister, Morne Steyn and more occupy the most sought-after spots. With all the money in the world, why would the clubs cook dinner when they can pick up Michelin-star take-out every evening?

Unsurprisingly, the owners’ gluttony is affecting the national team.

Those effects are in evidence in the squad that heads to Australia. In a forward pack full of giant, skilful players, but prone to being bullied into indiscipline – as they were by the Irish and Welsh earlier this year – Pascal Pape is rested and Thierry Dusautoir returns as captain.

There’s talent, no doubt, in the shape of Yannick Nyanga, Louis Picamoles and Nicolas Mas, but is there the know-how or the tough underbelly required to win Tests? The jury remains well and truly out.

In the backs, besides Francois Trinh-Duc, who appears to have been put out to pasture by Saint-André, Remi Tales is the only eligible outside-half starting consistently for his club. He is joined by Frederic Michalak, still elusiveness personified, in a position where Les Bleus look desperately under-strength.

That doesn’t mean the 10-channel is somewhere that the Wallabies don’t need to wise up, though. Picamoles will be running off number 10, and outside Tales, who Saint-André has confirmed is his first choice, will be Wesley Fofana – the man they call Le Guépard (The Cheetah) – and Mathieu Bastareaud.

Even in French rugby’s winter of discontent in 2013, Fofana was voted into the inaugural IRPA World XV by his international opponents.

In attack, as Bastareaud engages contact, Fofana evades it; they’re a combination of great promise and Gael Fickou is a dangerous understudy. Out wide, Yoann Huget is a class act and at half-back, the return of Morgan Parra is encouraging.

In summary, the recent record is horrible and there’s little evidence that they’re the force of old. Saint-André may have ditched the adventure, but the maddening and the mercurial remain and so does the individual talent to turn this rotten run in a second.

Mr McKenzie, beware the coiled spring – no team containing the players listed above is a basket case. This, after all, is the French rugby team. Who knows what’s coming next?