Three matches to be played in ten days on the other side of the world, at the end of a special Covid season and with a B team, or even C. Put like this, the equation of the XV of France in Australia is of the insoluble kind. This Monday morning (in France), two days before the first test against the Wallabies, coach Fabien Galthié and general manager Raphaël Ibañez, however, performed well during the press videoconference.
From the hotel in Sydney where they finish the fortnight started since their arrival in the country of Nicole Kidman and Nick Kyrgios, Galthié thus hailed “the best team of the moment”. While 21 uncapped constitute this delegation of 41 players, deprived of the finalists of the Top 14 Toulouse and La Rochelle, injured and spared (Ollivon, Fickou, Serin, Haouas, Vakatawa, Willemse …), only two rookies will start in Brisbane, that the Blues will rally on Tuesday: hooker Gaëtan Barlot (Castres) and back Melvyn Jaminet (Perpignan).
🇦🇺🇫🇷 The summer tour of #XVdeFrance in Australia starts Wednesday! #AUSFRA
Here is ́ for this first match in Brisbane! ✊ #NotLet’sXV pic.twitter.com/C50ctsOyWQ
– France Rugby (@FranceRugby) July 3, 2021
“Gaëtan had a very, very good season with the CO after having already performed very well at Colomiers, greeted the boss of the Blues. Melvyn exploded with Usap in Pro D2 and he has confirmed his potential in training for two weeks like Gaëtan. Galthié then outlined the qualities of the five “finishers” (who were called substitutes not so long ago) new to this level (Etrillard, Walcker, Falatea, Vanverberghe, Iribaren).
Old fashioned motivation?
The message has passed: the time is not for whining, even if the stay under a bell in an Australia where the Covid is waking up does not really make you dream. With a team thus tinkered with, without collective benchmarks, the good old methods are sometimes good. Style (in redacted version): “the chicks opposite take us for painters, we are going to prove to them what we have in the stomach. “This is probably how we must understand the projection of the French coach about the Australians,” who will try to hurt us because they imagine that we are a young team a little inexperienced and that we are going watch them play ”.
Frankly, it is hard to say to what level these Wallabies will rise, coming out of a balanced Rugby Championship 2020 (two draws against Argentina, one victory and one defeat against New Zealand). But they will be clearly favorites, as Galthié readily admits, in a rather surprising outing.
“These are the players who have decided to hang this sentence throughout this tour, a fairly simple sentence:” Because this tour is an opportunity to confirm and grow, we intend to give everything because our strengths are the recklessness and the will of the challenger. We have everything to gain. ” After verification, Emile Coué has nothing to do with this initiative. Despite the call for air created by the absence of many blue executives, the inventor of the eponymous method was not selected for this perilous journey to the antipodes.