You through tinkering, Marc?

He’s been derided as an eccentric and his team dismissed in the national media as the worst French side ever to win a Grand Slam. Yet, despite all that, Marc Lièvremont is still smiling, writes Ian Moriarty.

IF A week is a long time in sport, spare a thought for Marc Lièvremont, for whom last year must have felt like an eternity. Just two months ago, his world was pulled apart when his Grand Slam winners were hammered 59-16 by Australia in front of their home crowd at the Stade de France. The match was the climax to a dreadful autumn series and an equally bad June tour to South Africa and Argentina, and it left Lièvremont’s World Cup plans in disarray and his job under threat.

Cue rumours of meltdown in the French camp and crisis talks between the coaching team and French Federation president Pierre Camou. Yet despite all the talk of splits and recrimination, Lièvremont survived, saved perhaps by the creeping presence of a World Cup year, but he did announce that he would go when his current contract ends after the trip to New Zealand in October. Hardly the ideal way to cap a Grand Slam year then?