I was in Paris when France beat New Zealand in November. After the match, I went to meet some of the players. I don’t think I had ever seen the members of a French squad so relaxed in each other’s company, so tight as a unit — and I include my time in the international set-up.
Of course appearances can be deceptive — team spirit is, as someone once noted, an illusion glimpsed in the aftermath of victory. Yet that cohesiveness tallied with something I had observed while watching the Top 14. It was the way the France players — on opposite sides for their clubs — shook hands and acknowledged one another after the final whistle.
There was a kinship which I hadn’t often noticed among the brutal rivalries of French club rugby. It makes me think that France have finally created a club spirit within the international set-up.
Who takes the credit for this? You have to start at the top. Fabien Galthié was appointed head coach in 2019 after a near-decade of underachievement. Until this year, France hadn’t gone into the last weekend of the Six Nations with a chance of a grand slam since we last won one in 2010; in fact, France had barely been in with a shout of a championship going into the last round before Galthié took over.
I played under him when he had his first coaching role at Stade Francais. He wasn’t long retired as a player but his rugby intelligence more than compensated for his inexperience as a coach. We reached the Top 14 and Heineken Cup final at the end of his first season and won the Bouclier (the club championship) two years later.
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How would I describe Galthié? A passionate, clever strategist but also bold in his selection and tactics. Is he an empathetic coach? If I’m honest, probably not. What he has done, though, is surround himself with people who are able to connect on an emotional and tactical level with his players.
Previous France coaching panels have usually consisted of a ‘big dog’ in charge with a few puppies underneath him. Galthié is a big dog but no one would ever accuse Shaun Edwards, the defence coach, or Raphaël Ibañez, the team manager, of being puppies.
That pair are the most visible of Galthié’s assistants but I should also mention the attack coach, Laurent Labit, and performance director, Thibault Giroud. Labit was formerly joint head coach at Racing 92; Giroud has had strength-and-conditioning roles in American football, athletics and all over the rugby world. Like Ibañez and Edwards, these are not poodles.
The man I want to draw attention to, however, is the forwards coach, William Servat. William proved himself in the same role at Toulouse from 2012-19 and you wouldn’t say he has done a bad job with France either. His relationship with his players reminds me of the bond Adam Jones seems to share with his pack at Harlequins.
There will be some who will look at the forwards available to William and think he’s got one of the easiest jobs in the game, but look again at the number of caps won by the pack: the eight who started against Wales had an average of 23 each. That is not a huge amount in modern Test rugby, yet this unit not only look like they could be around for a long time but like they already have been around for a long time.
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Cyril Baille, Julien Marchand and Cameron Woki are three of the standout performers. Woki reminds me of Courtney Lawes — he can play four or six, maybe doesn’t tackle quite as hard as Lawes but has better hands. Baille and Marchant shoved the Irish scrum around almost single-handedly.
The former is a formidable scrummager but what interests me more is his interplay with Antoine Dupont. The dynamic between the two around the fringes is both the oil and the motor in the French attacking engine. Remember we are talking here about the connection between a scrum half and a prop — not the fly half or No 8.
On the subject of No 8s, Grégory Alldritt, like Woki, is not only a fine physical specimen but a real athlete and footballer. His decision-making is very sound too, which makes life easier for Dupont, who was only appointed captain last autumn. A strong leadership group is not something previous France sides have had but you can see one starting to form, with Gaël Fickou adding his intelligence as defensive captain.
It’s eight years since Fickou scored a fine, late try to beat England. He’s had injuries in the intervening years and, rather like France as a whole, his form has been inconsistent. Being handed defensive responsibilities by Edwards, however, has shifted him from the periphery to the centre of the group and the collective and individual benefits have accrued.
Like all Frenchmen, though, I worry that the sleeping giant that is England could be shaken from its slumber in Paris this evening. Wales drew France into a dogfight and disrupted their fluency last Friday. Any team with Maro Itoje, Lawes and Jamie George has even more potential to do the same.
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And then there are France’s past lapses. I think back to the game between these two sides at Twickenham last year when, 20-16 ahead with four minutes left, they allowed Itoje to score for a home win; or the following match, when they blew a chance to claim the Championship by conceding a late try to Scotland when they should have had the result in the bag.
Then we come to the try Mack Hansen scored for Ireland against them last month. France have just scored to go 10-0 up. The restart is good but Hansen is allowed to reclaim the kick almost unopposed and run in for the score. Whatever their imperfections, I can’t imagine England, Scotland, Ireland or Wales handing such a gift to their opponents.
We are into uncharted territory, then, for this group. After the 2019 World Cup, the selectors identified the best young talent — only four players aged over 30 were picked for the Six Nations squad in January — and have backed them to deliver through to next year’s World Cup. My heart is filled with excitement and love for them. Forget the underachievement of the past decade, today is the day to write the first page of a new, brighter chapter for French rugby.
● Benjamin Kayser won 37 caps for France between 2008 and 2015
