Beauty and the Beast: are Les Bleus the best team in world rugby?

Even the most passing of glances at recent global news will reveal the difficulty we have in reconciling the beauty and the beast within human nature.

It is a seminal story which seems to be ever more central to our evolution as a species. It is also a powerful dynamic in the construction and development of modern rugby teams.

The best rugby sides of the professional era are at ease in both poles of the spectrum, and can switch between ‘Beast’ and ‘Beauty’ mode with blinding speed and efficiency.

The All Blacks in their decade of domination (@2006-2016) could turn in the blink of an eye, converting turnovers ruthlessly won in contact into opportunities for creative counter-attack which delighted the eye. The darkness and the light morphed and worked together seamlessly.

All of the top nations in world rugby are seeking their own best version of this balance as the 2023 World Cup hurries over the horizon. The current World Champions South Africa are far more Beast than Beauty and are still struggling to discover their more sensitive side.

Last Saturday, the Stade de France in Paris provided the stage for the two sides who on current form approximate that balance best in the northern hemisphere – France and Ireland. Both teams had their physical totems: all 145 kilos of Uini Atonio in the French front row were playing directly opposite Andrew Porter, who reportedly squat-lifted 350 kilos at the tender age of 20 in Ireland’s gym tests.

That remarkable figure is almost three times more than Porter’s bodyweight. To put the feat in some perspective, a squat of more than 275 kilos for a 120-kilo male would pigeon-hole them at ‘elite’ level. Porter still crams over 5,000 calories into his daily eight-hour eating window, but he is moving from the physical element of his development towards the technical.

As he said to Johnny Watterson of The Irish Times back in 2019, “Now I focus on the technical side. A lot of guys at my age would find themselves having to catch up in terms of physical size. I almost did it the other way around. Now I clean up percentages here and there, my speed, my ball-carrying, my ruck, my clear-outs.”

Porter’s father Ernie was ‘a prop in the back line’, a Beast masquerading as a Beauty. His son has already accomplished one of the hardest tasks in the professional game, moving from one side of the front row to the other, and back again in the space of only four senior seasons:

“It took a while to get used to it [tight-head prop], all the pressure coming through, standing up out of scrums gasping for air. I had to learn how to breathe in the scrum.”

Now Andrew Porter is chasing the lustrous shadow of his teammate Tadhg Furlong from the opposite side of the set-piece: “He’s everywhere, a great carrier, a great catch and pass, a ball player.”

Andrew Porter wants that rugby life, lived in the ultimate balance.

On late Saturday afternoon in Paris, he was a strong-man France had to neutralise. They could not nullify his sheer work-rate: Porter had 27 cleanouts as one of the first three ruck supports on Ireland ball, and topped the charts with eight more arrivals and two poaches on the defensive side of the breakdown.

France’s first try of the match came in only the second minute, and was founded on a coruscating cleanout of Porter by his French loose-head counterpart Cyrille Baille:

Baille bangs Porter out of the tackle area one-on-one to create ruck ball which takes less than one second to deliver to Antoine Dupont. The speed of ball leaves Jack Conan short of time to reach the space Romain Ntamack wants to attack:

It was a beautiful moment of interplay between the French halves, but it was created by Baille’s beastly work at the ruck.

Ireland replied almost immediately with a magical moment of their own, and one which added to ex-Brumby Mack Hansen’s burgeoning reputation up north. It came direct from a kick-off after France had moved 10-0 in front on the scoreboard:

Hansen catches the ball at full stretch and without breaking stride, in a fairy-tale sequence which would be at home in any Disney movie.

After that briefly beautiful interlude, it was back to the Beast for the remainder of a first period in which France built what should have been a game-deciding 19-7 lead:

France had no hesitation in adding a second and third defender to the tackle area in order to overwhelm the Irish cleanout and force an error either directly via a breakdown steal, or indirectly through forcing a fumble or error on the following play. In total, les Bleus stole five balls from 87 Ireland breakdowns, and that is probably too high a figure for Irish comfort.

When the occasion presented, France again looked to add a lustrous glow to their appetite for the dirty work at cleanout time:

The combination of number 12 Yoram Moefana and number 14 Damian Penaud hurls another of the Irish strong-men (centre Bundee Aki) conclusively out of the first ruck, and the estimable Greg Alldritt is on hand to exploit the space up the gut. A couple of phases later, Dupont was ready to throw the miracle ball from centre-field and a standing start out to Penaud, fully 25 metres away on the right:

Ireland’s resurgence in the first ten minutes of the second half was keyed by one of Andrew Porter’s defensive turnovers at the breakdown:

This time, Baile is too slow to get to Porter, and Ireland scored immediately from the following lineout drive through Josh van der Flier:

Within four minutes, the men in green had scored their third try of the game and pulled back to a wafer-thin one-point margin:

Andrew Porter and Jack Conan smash Alldritt off on the angle at cleanout time, leaving three French defenders on the ground as the ball is won. That in turn opens the way for Jamison Gibson-Park on the very next phase:

Suddenly one French defender – South African-born second row Paul Willemse – is faced by an impossible situation, with three potential Ireland attackers in front of him and the next man Cameron Woki too far away to help.

The final quarter belonged to les Bleus, who remembered their earlier feeling for the Beast by flooding Ireland rucks with two or three men:

The final straw was the sight of human siege-tower Romain Taofifenua causing mayhem at another Ireland ruck, creating a turnover from which Cyrille Baille scored the game-winning try:

Any ideas Ireland might have had about under-resourcing the ruck was continually challenged by France’s willingness add a second and third man to the battle at source, and it was a sharp reminder that the desire for Beauty can only be fulfilled when the needs of the Beast are met.

Summary
The war of the strong-men at the Stade de France leaned in France’s favour – slightly but significantly over the course of the 85-minute drama. As the final 30-24 scoreline suggests, there was little in it, but Les Bleus enjoyed more of the physical edge in contact.

France demonstrated that they are well on the way to establishing an ideal equilibrium between the Beauty and the Beast, and those two elements have always been a part of both their rugby nature and wider culture. The first version of the story was written by French writer Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve as long ago as 1740. The first movie, La Belle et La Bête, was made by Jean Cocteau in 1946, well before Walt Disney.

Shaun Edwards keeps the Beast on a long leash, and gives it a structured role to play on defence, and even backs like World Player of the Year Antoine Dupont contain a bit of both in their make-up. Not that Ireland will be too disappointed when they dissect the game after the fact. They have their share of strong-men, like props Andrew Porter and Tadhg Furlong, who are well able to add aesthetic value while honouring the core tasks.

The game in Paris was a couple of notches above everything which had gone before in this Six Nations, in terms of intensity and ferocity in contact. There were some beautiful moments, none more so than Mack Hansen’s catch-and-run straight from the kick-off, but there were more Oohs! And Aahs! as strength was laid on strength and the last man was left standing – if he was lucky.

With the World Cup in view, there is plenty of happiness to go around for both teams.

Our experts Brett McKay and Geoff Parkes are off to a cracking start on The Roar Rugby Podcast as they tackle the state of play in the Six Nations and look ahead to the launch of Super Rugby Pacific. Click below to play or follow on Spotify.