Engineered and precise, big, bold and brash: The French are closing in on RWC greatness

France measures things. Cream, air, happiness, ascents, scrums.

On a moving sidewalk in a small town in the Rhone-Alpes, I saw a small sign: 11.36 degree slant.

Every funicular in the land has a precise measurement sign, too.

For no apparent reason. It’s a national compulsion.

Bridges take a lifetime to build in France, but then, they last. The process is so much more important than the outcome, it almost doesn’t happen.

The popular caricature of the French is a wan, beret-donning, cigarette-sucking aesthete philosopher who can barely identify a tyre, let alone change it. The truth is France makes things, designs things, and is a precise culture obsessed with mistakes. A critic’s paradise.

No rugby country can outmeasure France. They do it to prove someone made an error. And an error in France is punished with great passion.

Enter the wrong passage, pay the wrong cop in Marseilles, use the wrong verb, employ the wrong implement, mismatch sauce with protein, or leave home without the correct identity, COVID, or shoes and you will pay for it in spades.

School kids in France are not given promotions for free; grades are tough to get. Yet, the country has over 600,000 engineers, renowned for their ingenuity and design.

Also, I get the feeling they take perverse pleasure in engineering draconian solutions for problems that barely exist.

For example, France is the only place I’ve had to work as hard at exiting as entering: in buildings, in metros, in post offices. You cannot just walk out. A card or ticket to leave!

Radars are everywhere, so even when you finally escape the paralysis of the peripherique, and find yourself on open road, you cannot let your car run.

Curbs and speed bumps are killers: sharp and extreme.

One bad grade, at age 18, and medical school is lost forever.

Students are tracked early and cannot deviate.

France makes you pay for mistakes for a long time.

For decades the rap on their rugby was the same: even their own fans turned on them. Some talent, little fitness, and a surly relationship with tactical nous.

But now is new?

Rugby in France is hitting a high. Engineered and precise. Big and bold and brash. But old school in conception, because they do nothing novel or new.

Antoine Dupont (Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)

World star Antoine Dupont is reportedly a stickler for details. In practice, if a lineout jumper feeds him trash off the top, he changes places. He is lifted. And he dumps wobblers on the 2m ‘halfback’ to show him how it feels. This is not old France.

Fabian Galthie has the country buzzing about rugby. It’s not just the wins over New Zealand and Ireland. It is the measurable pace and power and precision.

Reading the local papers and chatting with French fans at the boulangerie this morning, one is struck by the immense pride this place has in their team.

They are permitting themselves to dream.

It’s not like France hasn’t tried to engineer an outcome before.

A six-legged robotic scrum resides at French rugby HQ in Marcoussis. Conceived and made by a team of simulation experts using metrics developed by a national scientific research institute and the French Rugby Federation, the simulator uses a six-axis motion system to respond to player inputs (force and motion) via sensors installed behind the beams and shoulder pads.

It replicates dynamism: the beam moves left and right, backwards and forwards, up and down.

French rugby wanted to identify any individual player weaknesses reducing the overall effectiveness of the scrum formation. Thales project engineer Serge Couvet says: “The scrum members need to make the formation move as a single man.”

Well, it did not come by machine. The French scrum is anchored by tough teak.

Galthie praised Cyril Baille as the best LH in the world, after crushing Scotland.

(Photo by Lionel Hahn/Getty Images)

The excellent sports newspaper L’Equipe went along with him: who can challenge Cyril, they asked? Joe Moody, Ox Nche, Joe Marler, Andrew Porter, Wyn Jones were the inferior rivals listed.

Did they so easily forget that spicy Bok plum Steven Kitshoff?

“We easily imagine Baille on a podium,” the paper closed.

Imagination is the first step in engineering. France is playing like they are on song, measured and in tune.

On The Roar Rugby Podcast last week, I predicted a 20-point win over the Scots at Murrayfield. One point off.

The ingredients were strong: six tries, more from counterattack than phase ball, ultra efficient at the breakdown, winners of most collisions, maniacal support play, and a 6-2 bench.

The French call the bench ‘le banc’ and they use it with interest. All 14 forwards will get plenty of time on the field, with rigid rules around work output. The second the GPS measures fatigue, off they go. A behemoth 140kg boy will trot off and a 145kg lad takes his place.

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They use their big men differently from most teams. Two-metre lock Paul Willemse is a lineout lifter and first-up tackler who has instructions to shoot up the field and hit carrier or ruck as hard as possible. Cameron Woki has the same brief. Even Uini Atonio (probably closer to 150 kg) shoots the line in midfield.

In L’Equipe, the wrap of the Scotland win proclaimed the ruck ‘cimitieres des ambitions adverses,’ the cemetery of opponents’ ambitions. And so it was last weekend. The Scots had ball. But never a flow, or pattern.

The French pack smashes the source of ball, not at each ruck, but in about every third or fourth. And don’t just spoil the ball: they sometimes pinch it and launch devastating sorties.

Language tells us more about a culture than food.

The French call a Grand Slam ‘du Grande Chelem’ and a referee is le arbitre. To arbitrate has a connotation of listening to both sides, to allowing it to play out before ruling. A ref is more instantaneous.

In our stats, we compare ‘territory.’ In France, this is called ‘occupation.’ Perhaps this is more apt. Just being in a particular spot on a rugby pitch is interesting, but not dispositive. To occupy that space; now that is good.

The current French team occupies space. No matter who is in their loose trio (the current mix of Cros-Delonche-Alldritt is ruling the Six Nations), they step over the tackler, bind hard past, set great guards, come in at the right height, attack the strong part of the ruck but without tipping off the scrumhalf, and are just folding guys in the tackle.

Gael Fickou in particular is rocking foes in the tackle, and when he has the ball, he is shirking off tacklers. Ali Price seemed helpless to even slow him down en route to a lethal try in Edinburgh.

They still switched off a few times, because France gets bored when they are ahead, but it mattered not because Stuart Hogg contributed his usual ‘one huge error per game’ moment.

Also, the French ‘c’est une philosophie” is “les Fulgarants” (exponential rapidity). To switch from defence to attack in a second or less. To go hard after a U-turn.

But some things never change.

The French are tough graders!

A six-try win away results in only a 6.5 average for the team in L’Equipe? The same win for the Wallabies would surely elicit 8s and 9s?

‘It boy’ Dupont is awarded an 8 as well as hooker Julian Marchand and Baille.

Seven is given to Damian Penaud, who looked a bit slow when up against Duhan van der Merwe, Fickou, Jonathan Danty, Romain Ntamack, Alldritt, Cros, Willemse, and “le Banc.”

The French media was merciless for profligate Melvyn Jaminet (4) and Utonio (4), who looked to have a bad hip. For each player, the writer listed a detailed list of errors, with the exact time of the problem.

But overall, France managed the ‘arbitrator’ very well, cut down on penalties, and are still on track for a Grande Chelem.

They have measured the task, bid for the right operators, and have a precise vision of their design. Who can disturb it?

Plot reveal: le Crunch is the last game on the last weekend. If Eddie’s New England can keep winning, ugly or no, that sets up for a coronation in Paris or one more heartbreak for France.