France continue not so much to tinker as to fidget. They played without sparkle against Scotland even in victory, and certainly in defeat to Ireland and Wales. They then cleared the air behind closed doors and out in public – as only the French can – appealed to their own sense of honour at representing the homeland and now face Italy in Rome. Their mood gauge would appear to have been reset to High Resolve, but there’s no doubt there is still a certain twitchiness about the team and the style, and the whole thing about simply being French in the Six Nations.
Eight changes in round four of a five-match championship say a lot. Some are enforced through injury – Maxime Mermoz for Wesley Fofana in the centre; Sébastien Tillous-Borde for Morgan Parra at scrum-half – but most are a quest for something different, something new and fresh. The new cap, Loann Goujon at No8, for example, is expected to try to make passes out of contact in a way that Damien Chouly could not. Gaël Fickou, only 20 but who seems to have been on the verge of great things for several years, has been put alongside Mermoz in the centre, to caress a little elegance into midfield before Mathieu Bastareaud comes off the bench in his bovver boots.
Noa Nakaitaci, a flying Fiji-Frenchman, is a bit of an oddity – a wing on the wing. The trend of the moment seems to require full-back experience on the extremities, in anticipation of that other fashion of the hour, the precision aerial game. Instead, Nakaitaci has his chance and delicate probes off his boot may not be his thing. He can certainly run.
Nicolas Mas is not best known for his gallops in open space. Not once in 76 caps has the noble prop crossed for a try. He is not being asked to move anywhere at great speed on Sunday, but is back to give solidity to a scrum that will feel the drive of an Italy pack that turned the dread of another fruitless campaign into a soaring celebration at Murrayfield. Sergio Parisse is a household name in European sport, and is the one rugby name known from top to toe in Italy. But he is also the consummate team player for his country – just the Parisse part of the pacchetto. What wouldn’t France give for a little of the ferocious togetherness of their opponents?
What wouldn’t they give for an Edoardo Gori at scrum-half? The Italy No9 obviously lets Parisse at No8 have first option when it comes to use of the ball, but Gori is a gifted second fiddle. Tillous-Borde is France’s third starting scrum-half this championship, restored inside Camille Lopez at 10, a reforming of the partnership that ignited hopes in November that France were progressing. Hopes that do not exactly burn brightly now.
It is another trend – set by Devin Toner and Luke Charteris – to have Empire State second rows. Alexandre Flanquart at 6ft 9in is up there, the obstacle over which the throwing hooker is dared to go. There was a time when the presence of the impossibly tall forward threatened to take rugby literally out of the reach of most of its participants, but now that the sport’s prized place as a home for players of all shapes and sizes is imperilled by identikit 6ft 4in wing-back-row-scrum half-centre-full-back-props it is reassuring to see a player who has to duck when the roof is closed in Cardiff.
This game is a long way south of there – the Olympic Stadium in Rome, where Flanquart and the other seven French forwards are vulnerable to a right going-over. The entire team presumably start as underdogs. To see mighty France reduced to such a role is still puzzling. Italy, after all, are on only a one-match roll. But they have won the last two encounters against France at home. The Italian forwards do not yield before anyone, let alone a team patently out of sorts and perhaps out of love with themselves.
To expect France to master a more fluid game – of passes out of contact, of churning forward drives blending seamlessly with backs’ angled thrusts from deep and at pace – may be fanciful. By October, after a summer in World Cup camp, they may be closer to the mythical French way, but on Sunday in Rome they will be scrabbling for inches of territory and scrapping for possession. Scrabbling and scraps – hardly designer-label rugby, and enough to make a Frenchman’s nose wrinkle – but it will have to do.
ITALY L McClean (Sale); L Sarto (Zebre), L Morisi (Treviso), A Masi (Wasps), G Venditti; K Haimona (both Zebre), E Gori (Treviso); M Aguero (Zebre), L Ghiraldini (Leicester), D Chistolini, G Biagi (both Zebre), J Furno (Newcastle), F Minto (Treviso), S Vunisa (Zebre), S Parisse (Stade Francais, capt).
Replaements: A Manici (Zebre), A De Marchi (Sale), L Cittadini (Wasps), Q Geldenhuys (Zebre), M Barbini (Treviso), G Palazzani (Zebre), T Allan (Perpignan), E Bacchin (Treviso).
FRANCE S Spedding (Bayonne); Y Huget, G Fickou (both Toulouse), M Mermoz (Toulon), N Nakaitaci; C Lopez (both Clermont Auvergne), S Tillous-Borde (Toulon); E Ben Arous (Racing Métro), G Guirado (Toulon), N Mas (Montpellier), A Flanquart (Stade Français), Y Maestri, T Dusautoir (both Toulouse, capt), B Le Roux (Racing Métro), L Goujon (La Rochelle).
Replacements B Kayser (Clermont Auvergne), R Slimani (Stade Français), V Debaty (Clermont), R Taofifénua (Toulon), D Chouly (Clermont), R Kockott (Castres), J Plisson (Stade Français), M Bastareaud (Toulon).
Referee: JP Doyle (England).
