Galthie confident France will ‘soar like birds’
Some years back, the 62-times capped number nine was asked to impart his wisdom on why the French could make New Zealand look decidedly average one day before crumbling to far lesser opposition the very next.
"Sometimes, France have the capacity to beat any team in the world," the Stade Francais player replied at the time. "We soar with the birds ... and sometimes we are just complete shit. When we wake up we never know which it will be but it doesn't worry me any more."
That was then however. This is now and the 34-year-old dynamo knows he cannot afford to take anything less than a supremely positive approach to the date with an Irish side who have defeated Les Blues on three of the last four occasions that the sides have met.
"We are expecting to win," he stated bluntly yesterday. "When you play a quarter-final you want just to win the match, nothing more. They (Ireland) are a very good team, a complete team, better than they were before. They have very strong forwards and very good backs. They have no feeble points. We know that it is going to be very hard but when you play a quarter-final it's difficult. When you play a semi-final it's more difficult. This is the World Cup."
In fact, what mood Galthie himself wakes up in on Sunday will go a long way to determining just which French side takes the field against the Irish at Melbourne's Telstra Dome. First capped back in 1991 his return of 60-odd caps, twelve years later seems a poor return for a man of his talent, but injuries have not been kind to a player who, nevertheless, is now appearing in his fourth World Cup.
The personal pinnacle of his career to date was only last season, when his performances in leading France to the Grand Slam secured him the IRB Player of the Year award. Facing him at the weekend will be Ireland's Peter Stringer a player eight years his junior and 10 centimetres shorter yet the pair do share some similarities.
"I think that he is a very good player and competitor. He played well with Munster, he plays well with Ireland and now he has good experience and he is going to be tough. I like to play against him because he is one of the best. He's a very good player."
Galthie's certainty in predicting a Gallic success in the quarter-final isn't quite matched by his opinion on the benefits to be accrued by their procession through Pool B to get there. In the end though, it isn't a topic that seems to alarm him to any great degree.
"We don't know. Sure, Ireland had tough matches against Australia and Argentina and you can say that one preparation is better than another preparation but we have had four good matches. We've played with this team for three matches and I think that we are okay."
The lack of competition in general in the group stages is one that he finds particularly alarming. While all sorts of answers to the problem have been suggested, Galthie's is quite simple. "The most important thing is to get the children to play rugby," he suggested.
"We have seen some very close matches and some very exciting matches, but not too many. I think that the gap between the strong teams and the developing teams has grown, and I am not sure if that is a good thing for rugby. We need the teams to get more competitive."
For now, France should have all the competition they can handle.
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