Laporte satisfied despite kicker crux

FRANCE coach Bernard Laporte declared himself fairly satisfied with his team’s Six Nations performance, though admitting he must solve a flyhalf-goalkicker problem before this year’s World Cup.

“You cannot be entirely satisfied when you don’t finish first but I’m satisfied as whole,” he said yesterday. “We have got the best attack after scoring 17 tries, including three at Twickenham, and we possibly have the best defence as well which is a paradox.

“We lost games over penalties. We regret the match in Ireland. We lost it because we were damn stupid and not because the Irish played better. To win at Twickenham is not easy. Nobody has done it over the last three years. We had a good game and I think the match was as good as won. England defeated us by an eight-point margin. They scored three penalties which didn’t exist and we gave away nine very kickable points.”

Laporte pointed out that the defending Six Nations champions played all season without their three best players from last year’s competition, scrumhalf and captain Fabien Galthie, centre Tony Marsh and prop Pieter De Villiers: “If England were playing without Jonny Wilkinson, Matt Dawson and Martin Johnson they would not be the same team and Australia without Stephen Larkham and George Gregan would not be the same team.”

However, the French coach admitted that another major problem had been the loss of form of Gerald Merceron, who held the fly-half position and assumed the goal-kicking duties during last year’s grand slam: “You cannot win high level matches without a very good goal-kicker and goal-kicking is raising a problem of balance between the half-backs.”

After giving a chance to Francois Gelez to replace Merceron as goal-kicking fly-half against Ireland, Laporte dropped him for the last two games against Italy and Wales.

In came Frederic Michalak, a swift ball handler, but still an unknown quantity has a goal-kicker.

Dimitri Yachvili, Galthie’s scrum-half understudy, was asked to kick against Italy and Wales, scoring 18 points in each game, but in Laporte’s mind Galthie will come back.

“We know what he brings to the team as a player and as a captain,” he said.

“This is really the only heavy question mark hanging over our World Cup squad.”

Meanwhile, Wales skipper Martyn Williams refused to criticise his side’s performance following Saturday’s 33-5 defeat by France, a result which placed the RBS 6 Nations wooden spoon in Welsh hands.

Williams was anxious to reflect on the positives, before admitting that France’s extra touch of class was too great an obstacle for the beleaguered Welsh to overcome: “We are very disappointed after putting in a top performance against Ireland, but that disappointment is more down to the final score than our performance. We competed on equal terms in the first 30 minutes.”

Williams says the Welsh rugby team can emulate the improvement shown recently by their soccer counterparts, if they are given time to develop: “Our performances against England and Ireland were good. We competed with both sides, but we need a win to get a bit of confidence.”

Meanwhile, Kenny Logan insists Scotland can look ahead to the World Cup with renewed confidence after finishing the RBS 6 Nations on a winning note. The 30-year-old Wasps winger bowed out of the championship with a man-of-the-match display that helped the Scots retain fourth place thanks to a 33-25 success over Italy at Murrayfield.

Logan revealed his intention to quit international rugby at the end of the World Cup in November.

The Scots, who had failed to cross their opponents’ line in three of their first four games, re-discovered their scoring touch to stave off the very real threat of a second demoralising defeat at the hands of the buoyant Azzurri.