No reason France can't go the whole way at the 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia

“We’re going to try to find something positive by saying that we have a lot of young players, a fine generation,” said Matthieu Jalibert after their one-point loss to South Africa.

SACRE BLEU: Reda Wardi of France after the 2023 Rugby World Cup quarter-final. Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

Defeat is nothing if not picturesque. Of all the images over the weekend, it was the sight of the French woman with the smudged face paint, squeezed forlornly into a corner of the metro carriage as it wound back into Paris after midnight, that stands out.

Thousands of people had shuffled patiently, meekly, towards the station next to the Stade de France on Sunday evening. The day had been filled with laughter and colour and bounce but there was nothing now so much as near-silence as people and life drained from the stadium and from the World Cup at large.