Welcome back French flair; goodbye Scottish optimism. A truly dreadful home performance was eclipsed by all the joys of the French playing the way that only they can, with pace, panache and ?lan yesterday. Forget the safety-first approach that epitomised their World Cup, they ran the ball from everywhere and, as often happens when teams play with such ambition, got the luck of the bounce.
“I was delighted with the way they played,” Marc Lièvremont, the coach, said afterwards. “I told the players to have the confidence to use the ball, and they did. It was important that they did not give the ball away, give Scotland the chance to counter attack, and to defend well and they did just that.”
If they can keep this style going through the entire RBS Six Nations Championship, France will be a threat, but that comes with a warning. There will be few other teams who give them the time and space that Scotland did. Nor will their remaining opponents hand the ball over with the same frequency or ease.
Frank Hadden, the Scotland coach, condemned his side’s “elementary errors”, before going on to bemoan the luck that went with them, the bounce of the ball favouring France in two tries and the officials doing a similar favour to the visiting team for the other.
Not that the luck was any more than the French deserved, if only for playing with an imagination and style that Scotland could never match. They may have met up for the first time at the start of the week, but the French found a simple way to conquer that, they never allowed the game to develop any sort of structure or rhythm. Instead they relied on their rugby instincts and superior skills to see them through. Scotland needed a tactical battle and never got one.
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The French were helped by some strange decisions from Alain Rolland, the referee, not least in the first try, when he ignored a blatantly forward pass as C?dric Heymans, the full back, and Vincent Clerc, the wing, carved out a break that had its origins in their Toulouse teamwork, and then ignoring the way Clerc crawled and wriggled over the line.
Worse still, Andrew Henderson, the centre, got himself into a fracas with Damien Traille, his opposite number, and with the apparent intervention of the video referee, was penalised from the kick off. Which may not be the end of the matter, since he appeared to butt Traille, a citing and ban are more than possible.
All of which was bad enough for Scotland but it was then followed by one of those kamikaze moments in which they specialise. A speculative kick by Julien Malzieu, the new France wing, seemed to be well covered until the bounce beat Rory Lamont, the full back, and when Dan Parks, the fly half, tried to hack clear, he succeed only in slicing back into Malzieu’s hands a foot from the try line. Game, set and match to France.
Forget the opening in which Scotland took the lead with a Parks dropped goal or the penalty by the same player that gave a brief flurry of hope to the home fans, they were never remotely in the game, the gulf in skill being ruthlessly exposed by a French side that barely dropped a ball all afternoon while the Scots coughed up dropped pass after dropped pass.
Instead there was a final display of flair from the French, Clerc latching onto a long pass, grubber kicking past the defence and having the pace and accuracy to get to the ball as it bounced up for him and race under the posts. In contrast, when Scotland did get a sniff of a try, first Chris Paterson, also chasing a kick through, lost crucial time waiting for the bounce and was caught an inch short and then Chris Cusiter, the replacement scrum half, lost the ball diving over the line. It pretty well summed up Scotland’s afternoon.
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Scorers: Scotland: Dropped goal: Parks (3min). Penalty goal: Parks (29). France: Tries: Clerc 2 (11, 68), Malzieu (24). Conversions: Elissalde 2, Skrela. Penalty goals: Traille 2 (18, 55).
Scoring sequence (Scotland first): 3-0, 3-7, 3-10, 3-17, 6-17 (half-time), 6-20, 6-27.
Scotland: R Lamont (Sale Sharks, rep: H Southwell, Edinburgh, 62); N Walker (Ospreys), N De Luca (Edinburgh), A Henderson (Glasgow), S Webster (Edinburgh); D Parks (Glasgow; rep: C Paterson, Gloucester, 62), M Blair (Edinburgh; rep: C Cusiter, Perpignan, 62); A Jacobsen (Edinburgh), R Ford (Edinburgh; rep: F Thomson, Glasgow, 80), E Murray (Northampton Saints, rep: G Kerr, Edinburgh, 60), N Hines (Perpignan), J Hamilton (Leicester; rep: S MacLeod, Llanelli Scarlets, 57), J White (Sale Sharks, captain), J Barclay (Glasgow), D Callam (Edinburgh; rep: K Brown, Glasgow, 50).
France: C Heymans (Toulouse); V Clerc (Toulouse; rep: A Rougerie, Clermont Auvergne, 76), D Marty (Perpignan), D Traille (Biarritz), J Malzieu (Clermont Auvergne); F Trinh-Duc (Montpellier; rep: D Skrela, Stade Français, 60), J-B Elissalde (Toulouse; rep: M Parra, Bourgoin, 70); L Faure (Sale Sharks), W Servat (Toulouse; rep: D Szarzewski, Stade Français, 50), J Brugnaut (Dax, rep: N Mas, Perpignan, 50), L Jacquet (Clermont Auvergne, rep: A Mela, Albi, 65), L Nallet (Castres, captain), F Ouedraogo (Montpellier), T Dusautoir (Toulouse), E Vermeulen (Clermont Auvergne; rep: J Bonnaire, Clermont Auvergne, 55).
Referee: A Rolland (Ireland).
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Attendance: 67,788.