France look to Fickou for salvation

RBS SIX NATIONS:

No, this is not yet another stroll down memory boulevard recalling that magical Parisian day in 2000 when a 21-year-old Brian O’Driscoll announced his brilliance on the world stage with a breathtaking hat-trick of tries.

Instead, 14 years on, it is another once-in-a-generation centre who is about to be unleashed on a not quite unsuspecting public.

As Ireland go to the well with O’Driscoll for the 141st and last time tomorrow night, searching for just the second championship of the iconic No 13’s glorious international career, France will make their last-ditch bid for the most unlikely of Six Nations titles with their hopes resting on the teenage shoulders of Toulouse outside centre Gael Fickou.

They may have won three of their four games in this campaign, just like Ireland, but the French have reached this point on a very different trajectory, scraping an opening win against England, relying on a golden 10 minutes to account for Italy, going down in flames against Wales and then getting out of jail in Scotland.

While Joe Schmidt’s Irish have gone from strength to strength, Philippe Saint-Andre’s side have stumbled from game to game. And for a side still in with a sniff of the title they more resemble a punch-drunk boxer on the ropes than a champion set to majestically put away his rival.

Yet if France are to receive a knockout blow from Ireland tomorrow, Saint-Andre’s selection yesterday makes it clear they intend to do it swinging with both fists. Sanity and solidity has been restored to the pack with hooker Dimitri Szarzewski returning from injury to try and rescue a woeful lineout that with Brice Mach supplying the arrows managed to lose eight of their 14 throws at Murrayfield last Saturday.

Also returning to the fold having missed the 19-17 win over the Scots is back-rower Louis Picamoles, dropped after the Cardiff debacle. In the absence of the injured Yannick Nyanga and Thierry Dusautoir, he is a man who can cause big problems to the Irish with his ball-carrying.

The backs could be similarly transformed by the inclusion of Castres fly-half Remi Tales, who replaces the inexperienced and so far ineffective Jules Plisson who enraged French opinion at the controls of France’s directionless attacking play. When France have scored tries in this tournament, it has been in spite of their game managers, relying on the inventiveness of their back three in broken play.

Fickou, less than two weeks short of his 20th birthday, may widen that creativity pool in the absence of injured Wesley Fofana, having already shown us in this championship how dangerous he can be, coming off the bench to score the try that broke English hearts in the opening round.

With midfield tank Mathieu Bastareaud alongside him, Fickou will go up against the last great playmaking centre partnership of Gordon D’Arcy and O’Driscoll, fresh from their successful unravelling of Italy last Saturday.

That was O’Driscoll’s last home Test and he provided a tour de force, creating three of the first four tries in a seven-try Dublin demolition of the Italians from which Schmidt has made just one change to his starting 15.

That sees Peter O’Mahony restored to blindside flanker after resting sore hamstrings last week as Schmidt has rightly entrusted the players who have brought Ireland to the brink of silverware in his first season as head coach to finish the job this weekend.

If the contrast in journeys to this point has been startling then so has the respective selection processes. France are scrambling desperately for respectability, Ireland gliding almost seamlessly towards a championship.

It should make for an intriguing 80 minutes.