Be careful what you wish for in lamenting French demise

Christy Ring doesn’t often spring to mind on Six Nations weekends, but the great one’s remark about the GAA being half-dressed without a strong Tipperary could be easily tweaked for France, such is its importance to rugby as another championship dawns and Ireland make the trip to Paris unburdened by the terror of old.

The notion that Irish rugby fans could look past the imminent business in the French capital and crane their necks towards a possible Grand Slam decider at Twickenham would have been ludicrous to generations who were weighed down by feelings of dread rather than expectation on their journeys to Paris in springtime.

Whether player or supporter, most had their tale of a beating on the pitch salved every so slightly by alcohol. This writer’s own offering stems from a first Stade de France assignment in 2006, when a ‘guess the time of the first score’ competition run by the French federation in the press box earned us a bottle of champers.

Two minutes we ventured. It took just 60 seconds longer for Tommy Bowe to slip and Aurelien Rougerie to breeze by him and over the line, but it was close enough for yours truly on one of those afternoons when an Irish side was swept aside on one of those irrepressible French tides that were once a trademark.

The waters now are mostly turbulent. It used to be that the French jostled with England on a perennial basis for the right to stand on the championship table’s summit, but their third place last year was a first on the top half of the ladder since 2011 and they approach the latest running with a coach and a management team installed in haste.

It’s unfortunate, because the tournament — and world rugby, in general — is unquestionably a blander tapestry without their usual imprint. Disappointing as Ireland’s exit to Argentina was in 2015, the 62 points New Zealand put on France in the same city and same venue less than 24 hours earlier was a much more significant low for the game.

Their travails are well known. The squeeze being put on the national team by the Top 14 and its bottomless bucket of cash.

The massive influx of foreigners into the domestic league and the decrease in the flow of French-eligible players playing top club rugby. Most problematic of all is the sense of a rugby culture that no longer knows its place.

It makes for a sad spectacle and, yet, for all their problems, there is an element of ‘be careful what you wish for’ when lamenting their demise.

No country has suffered at their hands so egregiously as Ireland, whose record against them this last six, stuttering, years shows a decent-but-no-more return of four wins, two draws and two defeats.

Tom English’s book, No Borders: Playing Rugby for Ireland, captures this perfectly when framing the visit of France to Dublin in 1946. The sides hadn’t met in 15 years and Jack Kyle captured the sense of unknown when voicing the exotic names of their opponents’ hometowns. Places like Brive-la-Gaillarde. “It was all very glamorous — until they hit you,” he recalled.

‘Crito’, The Irish Press rugby correspondent, wrote about how he expected the home side to win and maybe even emulate the 24-0 hammering they gave thecontinentals back in 1913 in Cork. The result? A 4-3 loss. “The French team, which we thought was so harmless, gave Irish rugby a rare shaking at Lansdowne Road on Saturday,” Crito wrote.

A lesson from history, for the week that’s in it.

France at their worst have often been too good for Ireland. Time and again, it was France who stalled Ireland’s modern journey from also-rans to winners.

If the Vincent Clerc try and late Gallic flourish at Croke Park in 2007 stands as the most frustrating of reversals at their hands, then the 26-19 loss at Lansdowne Road two years earlier bears mentioning here, too.

Wins against Italy, Scotland, and England had encouraged thoughts of a Grand Slam. Beat the French at home and Ireland would travel to Cardiff for a winner-takes-all

meeting with Wales. Brian O’Driscoll would capture perfectly the exasperation bred by that missed opportunity in his diary: A Year in the Centre.

He wrote: “More disappointed than I can ever remember and we have suffered much heavier losses than this. Can’t see how Ireland will ever make the breakthrough.

This was our chance. These opportunities come around once in a generation for small sides like us. Utterly pissed off. Feel completely crushed and empty. We could have lost, but let’s be honest: we froze.”

Ireland would capture their Grand Slam in Paris four years later, of course, but too late for a host of that 2005 class, men like Kevin Maggs, Denis Hickie, and Anthony Foley. France even indulged in a lap of honour that day in Ballsbridge. They may be in disarray, but this is still Les Bleus. And in Paris.

Twickers will likely seem a long way away at one stage or another tomorrow.