Poux: We went back to the French way

PROP Jean-Baptiste Poux thinks his team’s resurgence at the Rugby World Cup has happened mainly because it stopped trying too hard to copy other teams, and simply got back to doing things the French way.

France overcame its poor start to the tournament and upset the odds to beat England 19-12 on Saturday night, setting up a semi-final against Wales next weekend.

Rifts and discontent in the French camp all came to a head with a shock defeat to Tonga, and led to a summit involving players and staff.

That, rather than an over-emphasis on discipline and organisation — not traditionally French hallmarks — did the trick.

“We tried to be organised, but I don’t think it suits us. We tried to put things into place before the tournament, but we realised that it doesn’t work unless we put our all into everything,” Poux said. “We would like to be more rigid, but every time we try to do that it doesn’t work.”

The French forwards showed renewed aggression against England, nothing like the tame, almost meek pack that succumbed against Tonga and to New Zealand in the pool stage.

Without an individual star player to pull the team out of trouble or to paper over the cracks, France relies heavily on its collective strength, its ability to create a sudden alchemy between the players as it did at Eden Park against England.

“The French strong point is to give everything and to have a collective. We don’t have this Anglo-Saxon culture where everyone prepares in their own way,” Poux said. “We have to give everything together.

“That’s the French way, but it also means we’re capable of producing upsets,” he added. “I think it’s a French thing, not just in sport. It’s the same everywhere, we’re capable of great things and then being catastrophic afterward.”

In both football and rugby, at both this World Cup and last year’s football World Cup, the French team has constantly had to deal with distractions caused by an apparent lack of unity between coach and players.

While France coach Marc Lievremont has been hard on his players, lambasting them in strong terms at times, Poux thinks the players are also to blame for becoming too complacent during the pool stage.

“We’re French, we moan about a lot of things,” Poux said. “If you keep on moaning this can send you into a negative spiral.

“When things weren’t going well, we asked ourselves ‘Is it the organisers? Is it this or that?’ When in fact it was us,” he added.

Poux, who has played 35 tests, admits the team hit new depths in the 19-14 loss to Tonga.

“I think we found ourselves again because of the fear of losing and of being ridiculous,” he said. “We were ridiculous in terms of commitment against Tonga, which is the worst thing you can do in rugby. After the Tonga defeat we woke up to ourselves.”

“We’d given a bad image of French rugby last week,” scrumhalf Dimitri Yachvili added. “We proved that by putting a lot of heart and aggression into it we could show something different. It’s a revenge over ourselves.”

Now France has to show it can carry its revival into Saturday’s against a Wales side brimming with confidence.

“You have to give everything that’s inside of you. We’re good at that (in one game), it’s over three (games) that it counts,” Poux said.