French rugby connection

Believe it or not France and New Zealand have shared the honours at past Rugby World Cups.

France v Japan, RWC 2011, photo/Getty Images

We’re in for a white-knuckle week, because on the night of the 24th the All Blacks have a date with their World Cup bogey team, France. At least that will be the media narrative, fleshed out with endless rehashes of Twickenham, 1999 and Cardiff, 2007. In the spirit of not letting the facts get in the way of a good story, Eden Park, 1987 and Sydney, 2003 will be barely mentioned.

The All Blacks are never France’s bogey team, yet the arithmetic is just as supportive of that contention: the two teams have met four times at World Cups for two wins apiece. Although France’s victories eliminated the All Blacks, the games the All Blacks won weren’t exactly sideshows – the final in 1987, the bronze medal match in 2003.

French rugby has always attracted highly adhesive labels. For instance, we’re told ad nauseam that the French are mercurial and enigmatic. It’s often said that you never know which French team will turn up, as if they’re the only team whose last performance isn’t a reliable preview of their next one. You could argue that the French have their feet on the ground. They accept that sometimes the force is with you and sometimes it isn’t. To them, a win is a win and a loss is a loss and tomorrow is another day.

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This is mere common sense, but common sense has less and less to do with sport, especially at the top level. The preparation of sports teams is understandably directed towards producing consistently good performances, but the fact remains that human beings have good days and bad, especially when they’re competing against other human beings. No matter how thorough and scientific the preparation, that will never change.

In the lead-up to the 1999 game, a French player remarked that “the All Blacks often win, but they don’t always win.” A statement of the thunderingly obvious, perhaps, but also a sensible attitude for an underdog. It’s certainly a more rational analysis of a two-horse race than insisting that one of the horses cannot possibly win, as many experts in the press box did.

French players continue to be dogged by a reputation for indiscipline, even though these days their club games seldom degenerate into brawls resembling the climactic scene from a particularly frenetic kung-fu movie. And the national team no longer makes a habit of getting offside with referees, although it still has to contend with the language barrier.

Alain Rolland, an Irishman with a French father, seems to be the only neutral referee who can speak fluent French – as opposed to the mangled, mysteriously accented, high-school variety. And as many a visitor to France has discovered, when it comes to establishing a rapport with the locals, mangled, mysteriously accented, high-school French can be worse than no French at all. These days referees jet around the world, often just to act as assistants (what used to be called touch judges) or television match officials. Perhaps they should skip the in-flight movies and spend some of that air-time studying French.

The fallacy persists that the French are hopeless away from home. Some history: in 1958 France became the first country to win a series in South Africa. The Wallabies have never won a series in South Africa; the British Lions first did it in 1974; the All Blacks first did it in 1996. France did it again in 1993, and the following year beat the All Blacks 2-0 in New Zealand. Wales hasn’t won a single test in New Zealand or South Africa.

In fact their World Cup record suggests the French are actually more dangerous away from home. As sub-hosts in 1991 they blew a home quarter-final; as hosts in 2007 they lost no fewer than three times. Forced to play a quarter-final in Cardiff after finishing second in their pool, they responded by knocking out the raging hot favourites. And we all know who they were. If you want a reason to be afraid, that’s as good as any.