French spreading the blame game

WELL, at least the beer on offer in the Stade de France is no longer under scrutiny.

In the rush to judgement after Friday night, French commentators have been spreading the blame around, with even the price of a pre-game lager in the stadium being linked to Argentina’s win over France in the Rugby World Cup opener. However, even though the said beer is €7 a glass, that looks like clutching at straws.

To give a taste of the atmosphere here, rugby magazine Midi-Olympique carried a one-word headline, “LOST!”; the newspaper Le Parisien couldn’t even manage a single word for its front cover the day after the game, simply carrying the evocative lament: “Aie, aie, aie!”.

Beyond the shock, there seems to be a general consensus that the occasion was just too much for some of the French players. Argentina captain Agustin Pichot said as much afterwards: “I said to Mario (Ledesma) that some of them weren’t right. I saw as soon as I came onto the field that David (Skrela) and Remy (Martin) in particular were stressed.”

The point was echoed yesterday by Bernard Lapasset, President of the FFR (the French Rugby Federation), who said he’d noticed the same thing.

“At the presentation of the teams,” Lapasset told L’Equipe, “I saw enormous pressure on their faces. One must get into a game without pressure, but with determination.”

It’s hardly a surprise that some of the men in blue found the World Cup opener fairly overpowering. It’s emerged since the game that before France took the field on Friday night, winger Clement Poitrenaud read aloud to his team-mates from the famous letter written by World War II Resistance fighter Guy Moquet. Moquet wrote the letter to his parents before being shot by the Germans in 1941 and it’s now synonymous with French patriotism.

The question now being asked all over France is whether that was a step too far in psyching up the team, with ‘fragile’ just one of the words used to condemn the French performance.

One man using that term about the French is their own coach, Bernard Laporte. Somewhat uncharacteristically Laporte has admitted to mistakes since the loss, such as getting the mix of replacements wrong. He said yesterday, for instance, that he regretted having five forwards and two backs on the bench on Friday night and in hindsight would have preferred having four forwards and three backs to draw his replacements from.

Now that France have lost a game, of course, everything is under scrutiny, such as the policy of hiding the team in the national rugby centre in Marcoussis, away from press and public alike. Comparisons are being drawn with the relatively free-and-easy attitude of the Argentineans, many of whom came back out of the dressing-rooms on Friday night in the Stade de France to dance and sing with their jubilant supporters.

Interestingly, former captain Fabien Pelous – who was called ashore with 20 minutes to go on Friday night – disagreed with his coach in the newspapers yesterday.

“We showed a general weakness,” said Pelous. “Bernard (Laporte) stigmatised one part of the team, but I believe that all of us, we didn’t do what was necessary to respond to the Argentineans.”

As evidence of a split in the camp it’s pretty thin. But Pelous and his coach are agreed on one thing: France are not out of contention yet.

There are omens from past tournaments which suggest the French can rally. In the 1991 World Cup hosts England began sluggishly, with a loss to New Zealand in the opening game, before rallying to make the final against Australia.

One positive France can take from Friday is the bonus point they earned. “It’s a meagre consolation – we’ll content ourselves with it while hoping it will count towards getting out of the group,” mused Laporte

He only had to look at some of the headlines yesterday to see what that bonus point could mean down the line: following a valuable 0-0 draw in Milan against Italy, the footballers of France were being praised for ‘Un point en or’, a golden point. The country’s rugby players may yet be thankful for Felipe Contepomi’s two late penalty misses.

Good news if you’re French, but if you’re not, that’s where the good news here ends – there’s no sign that the price of beer is coming down in the Stade de France, or Paris generally, any time soon . . .