Three French musketeers are all advocating a return to traditional Gallic flair and ‘le jeu du mouvement’ in the Five Nations battle against England
RUGBY: Mick Cleary
IT WAS a matchmaker’s dream: England versus France, the clash of two cultures, the collision of opposites. The English, all method, planning, order, sang-froid set against the wide-ranging, free-thinking, libertarian, volatile French.
They may have been stilted, limited, restricted and boring, but the England team of the early Nineties were winners. The French may have been gifted, imaginative, artistic and potent counter-attackers, but they were losers.
Between 1989 and 1995 England beat the French eight times in succession, a sequence finally broken with France’s victory in the World Cup third-place play- off. Above all else in that period, England were masters of the inner game, dominant across the psychological terrain, that little strip of turf between the ears on which so many battles are won or lost before they have ever started.
Saturday’s confrontation at Twickenham will be different. It is no less significant than ever in terms of settling the title, the championship within the championship, but it will have less of the poisonous resonance of earlier years. The mood has changed essentially because the personnel have changed. So much so that several of them are now in England peddling their trade.
Laurent Cabannes, the regal open-side flanker, and Thierry Lacroix, fly-half-cum- centre, are both at Harlequins, while the prince of the midfield, Philippe Sella, is resident at Saracens.
The Anglo-French connection also extends to France’s recently appointed co-coach, Pierre Villepreux, for so long considered a prophet without honour in his own country — so much so that he was called in by England in the early Nineties to help with their preparations.
If the cast list has undergone radical change, so too has the play in performance. Where once you knew where you stood, now you watch bemused as England stir from their early-match torpor and slice the opposition to pieces with beguiling rugby. They run from deep, cut acute, subtle angles and flow over the try-line as if they were, well dammit, Frenchmen. Meanwhile in their pre-Christmas series against the Springboks the French were lumpen, wooden and sterile. They were England of old but lacking the dominance. Not surprisingly, the series was lost 2-0.
Since Villepreux’s arrival there has been more elan, more adventure to their play. As they search for their new, yet indigenous, identity, one which craves and values self- expression, there have been many stutters. There is a transitional air about both teams, although England’s purple-patch double whammy suggests that they are nearer to finding the elusive blend than their opponents. France are still grasping at the ideal and in so doing making mistakes, as their frantic victory over Wales showed.
”If they do the same again against England, then, for sure, they will lose,” says Sella. ”Against England you do not make mistakes otherwise, boof, they nail you. I know. Rob Andrew kept doing it to me.”
Sella, now retired from international rugby, is looking forward to the clash for the simple reason that it will be a tussle of sporting skill. and not a bitter scrap of ego and twisted nationalism.
”Each side will have great respect for the other and so we will have a great, great encounter,” says Sella. ”We will be talking only about rugby, about how France must reach another level if they are to beat England, about how they must contain the English back-row above all, for if they allow them freedom, then it’s all over. No, this will be proper rugby in the proper spirit.”
Sella, the most capped player in history, is one of the sport’s true gentlemen, revered as much for his grace off the field as for his robustness on it. He took no pleasure from two games in particular, the spiteful World Cup quarter-final of 1991 and the tinder-box sequel a few months later in the Five Nations, when two Frenchmen were sent off.
”Those matches had been played before we ever reached the pitch,” he recalls. ”The climate was so aggressive in the build-up, with commentaries in the press of both countries. The French were all dirty and temperamental, the English all arrogant and cold. It was too much. It affected us badly. We had so much desire to beat the English above everyone else that we forgot how to play.
”In the end we developed a subconscious inferiority complex. We thought too much about the whole thing, became too motivated, too wound-up. It played right into their hands. England were contained and clinical, we were perturbed and emotional. There was too much animosity, which stemmed from tradition rather than from the guys being deliberately wicked. But it was there all right.
”And then it changed. And I’ll tell you when it changed. It was after the game two years ago at Twickenham. Suddenly at the banquet we all found ourselves at the bar together, English and French, all ducking away from all the boring stuff inside; and so we drank. It was magnificent. They weren’t arrogant after all and we weren’t maniacs.
”Rugby reclaimed the fixture. So that when we came to the World Cup play-off that summer we just got on with it. We’d missed out on our main objective, which was to win the Cup, so we were preoccupied with our sadness. We didn’t think about the long run of defeats any more, we didn’t even consider too much that it was England we were playing. The atmosphere for us was Club Med by comparison. And, hey, we won. The spell was broken.”
Lacroix, who played six times against England, also feels that things have moved on, not the least thing being that the English have loosened up.
”They were so strict in their play,” says Lacroix. ”They were afraid. But it was a good philosophy for victory. We copied it. We learnt British self-control and rigour. But again the game has raced ahead and the English are trying to move with it, to keep pace with the southern hemisphere.
”France, though, have stayed still. They have rejected professionalism and their game is suffering. It is why I am here. Not for the money but for the attitude and structure. There will be lots more French players following. I’m a little pessimistic about this week and about French rugby.”
The man trying to assuage that gloom is Villepreux, brought in to restore national heritage as much as tinker with a few techniques. ”France never truly played like France when they played England,” says Villepreux. ”They tried to become more English than the English. We became lost. Now we need to return to our true style, to le jeu du mouvement. England have changed. They’re looking for le rugby interactive. They’ve found it for brief moments. Whether they can find it for 80 minutes, I’m not so sure. It will be very interesting.”
And all for the right reasons. All that talk and not one mention of punches being thrown on Saturday. Whatever happened to tradition?