French beef with style-conscious media over ‘beautiful and tough’ boys in green

It was their coach four years ago. This time it is the media.

Yep, the French aren’t happy. Again. The beef with their press corps ahead of Sunday’s mouth-watering Pool D encounter against Ireland is cooking over what they believe is a tendency to build up Joe Schmidt’s men too much and talk down Les Bleus.

This is all obviously small potatoes compared to 2011, when the squad went into open revolt against then head coach Marc Lievremont after a pool defeat to Tonga, but it is less than ideal all the same and it has been building for some weeks now.