It is not quite 11 p.m. this Saturday and a burning Stade de France is celebrating its heroes, whose lap of honor never ends. As expected, the Blues easily subdued the helpless English against the mastery of Antoine Dupont and his family. The tenth Grand Slam of French rugby, the first since 2010, confirms the progress of a team inflated with glory and certainties with a view to a world title at home, in 2023.
The story is beautiful. But it is not yet written. Several obstacles can still derail the pretty tricolor train. 20 minutes has concocted a few scenarios to make people cry in cottages, from Biarritz to Belfort. Here are our dystopias, if the Servant Scarlet was playing rugby.
The English Rebellion
We believed them to be picking up, with already two defeats in this Tournament, entering Scotland (20-17) then against Ireland (15-32), last Saturday at Twickenham. But the English can boast: they have deprived their best enemies of the Grail after which the blue knights will continue to run for at least another year. Opener Marcus Smith won his capillary duel with Romain Ntamack and the front row, left prop Ellis Genge in the lead, martyred his prestigious counterpart, on the heels of his XXL performance against the XV at Clover.
Contacted during the week, Richard Pool-Jones had nevertheless warned us. “We tend to underestimate the England team, had slipped the former 3rd line of Biarritz and Stade Français, international for the Rose in 1998. It is reborn. We can imagine that the first stone of the edifice was laid against Ireland. In any case, it was the perfect training for this match at the Stade de France. »
Eddie Jones’ smirk joins in the French anti-Pantheon Will Carling’s “Sorry good game” and Owen Farrell’s self-satisfied grin.
The unfortunate nudge
We do not know if Jaco Peyper will dare to mime the gesture with English supporters in a bar on rue de la Soif. In any case, the South African referee did not hesitate long when Paul Willemse’s elbow accidentally met the nose of his counterpart Maro Itoje, from the 2nd minute of play.
Voluntary or not? It doesn’t matter after all… The French second line saw red, like Sébastien Vahaamahina – punished by the same man in black – against the Welsh in the quarter-final of the 2019 World Cup (20-19 defeat). And at the same time as Englishman Charlie Ewels a week earlier against Ireland. Same scenario, same punishment.
Pushed by the Stade de France as the men of Eddie Jones had been by Twickenham last Saturday, the Blues resisted but, exhausted, they ended up cracking on the hour mark against a numerical superiority formation and everything happy to deprive the descendants of Napoleon of happiness.
Annoying, even if Fabien Pelous, from the height of his 118 selections and four Grand Slams, had warned when we called him a few days earlier: “You are going to fight on a ball in the air, the guy falls in front of you and you can take a red. This random side can be scary, even if on the intrinsic value between the two teams, there is no comparison. Eternal regrets.
The kamikaze revival, Brice Dulin way against Scotland
But why Melvyn? It was enough to clear this ball in touch, even with the knee, for the match to be over, the French victory with this meager gap of two points ratified and the Grand Slam “in the pocket”. Impeccable until then, in the air as well as on foot, the rear of the Blues inexplicably wanted to relaunch this ultimate swell, like his predecessor Brice Dulin a year earlier against Scotland (23-27).
And like the Rochelais, the Perpignanais was locked out and then penalized. Thirty seconds later, polytattooed winger Jack Nowell flattened and plunged rugby France into despair. After a bitter fight, Jaminet may have lacked lucidity, having been drunk on English candles all evening, as Eddie Jones had requested. But more generally, the Habs have sometimes taken reckless risks to which they had not accustomed us.
What if Richard Pool-Jones had been right? “Perhaps the France team will be able to err on the side of pride if they try to play too much and underestimate the English team”, prophesied the very Francophile Englishman a few days earlier.
The conjunction of misfortunes
And so, the gods of rugby decided to make the Blues pay for all the success that had accompanied their magnificent journey so far, like this ball lost by the Welshman Jonathan Davies spinning on trial, eight days earlier in Cardiff (9 -13). All that was missing was a rain of locusts in Saint-Denis to complete the blackboard of this cursed Saturday.
From the first quarter of an hour, two capricious rebounds resulted in a double from English center Joe Marchant. 14-0 for La Rose, France will never manage to come back, especially deprived of their irreplaceable hinge Dupont-Ntamack, targeted by the harshness of the opponent and returned to the paddock prematurely.
Accustomed to cannon starts, the Blues found themselves this time running out of solutions. “I don’t know how this French team would behave being led because each time, they quickly took the score”, wondered this week Christophe Lamaison, hero of the 1999 World Cup. “Titou” forgot the entry failed against Italy, quickly corrected (37-10 in the end). But this time, it was England opposite, revanchist moreover…
Okay, we turn off the cameras and we come back to reality: the XV of France will beat England well and win, finally, its first title under the Galthié era. We wish him anyway.