Without being totally stunning, the XV of France beat the Pumas with authority in Saint-Denis and therefore ends the autumn break undefeated. It's worth celebrating, right?
Weaning looks tough. And if Fabien Galthié says to himself « addict » to “great evenings of the XV of France”we are more or less addicted to the same thing. Now that the Stade de France is emptying of its 70,000 inhabitants, we even say to ourselves that it is ultimately up to Rugby to strike a sudden death enclosure at the moment of the final whistle, this game is so overflowing of life. Elsewhere, it's simply the end of a match. Here, time stops and in the long convoy of spectators returned to the banality of working days, we already feel like orphans of the thousand and one pleasures of this autumnal episode.
Because November is a beautiful month, for anyone who knows how to perceive its light: it is the moment that the XV of France has chosen to reposition itself, following three successes which a priori do not suffer from any dispute, as the best European nation ; it also embodies the springboard that act 2 of the Galthié mandate, after a year 2024 less exciting than the previous ones, undeniably needed; it is finally a promise, an oath, “the kick off of a three-year journey”as summarized in his words by a national coach whose chevron mustache will survive or not this season which is slowly consuming…
Yesterday is behind, tomorrow is a mystery and so let's enjoy, one last time, what was our daily life for a month: let's celebrate the frank face, the good eye and the cowboy jaw of Paul Boudehent, anti Savea par excellence , commander of the shadow army, general-in-chief of the ragpickers and living example of what fortitude can accomplish on a rugby field; let's sing about the baby face of Louis Bielle-Biarrey, contemporary incarnation of the greyhound Philippe Bernat-Salles and the best argument for a rugby that dreams of being as much an avoidance game as a combat sport; let us salute the determination of Gabin Villière who, by dint of forgetting that he has no chance, often proves that “on a misunderstanding, it can work” ; let's keep in mind the touch of the ball of Thomas Ramos, whose talent for finding “50-22” is an insult to all the square footage of our little world; let us also praise the excess of Manny Meafou, his ability to push in a scrum behind a giant then in the grip of gastroenteritis and the bestiality of his “positive tackles”, since that is what the man calls them in a strange understatement. staff of the Blues, when the qualifiers of “attack”, “homicide” or “explosion” would obviously fit much better with the way of defending the Toulouse giant. Frankly ? It was beautiful, it was good and it ended, finally, as it began: with an authoritarian victory, the delight of a stadium committed to the cause of this French team and, at the end, the joy pure of an oval people who have never seemed so vast, so determined are they today to tear rugby away from its natural borders: a week after having gathered 8 million viewers for the France – New Zealand that the we know, the Dupont gang has some thus gathered 7 million for Argentina, a poster which, by the generality of its occurrence and the less bankable side of the Pumas, had never been intended to impress the audiences.
The Pumas have twisted
To the skeptics and migraine sufferers now condemning our silly rapture, we readily concede various arguments. Without being a total “gift”, the autumn tour first presented to our voracious appetite a Japanese empire on the verge of collapse. As a continuation of this match devoid of any real teaching, the All Blacks showed up in Saint-Denis after fourteen fights of similar intensity and, above all, two trips to England and Ireland during which they had at best let go juice, at worst left life. As for these Pumas on Friday evening, unrecognizable, compared to the men's match they had played a few days earlier in Dublin, they leave us today with a certain perplexity. This is because it is a posteriori absurd, if not totally inconsistent, to play twenty minutes of a test match of this scale with atrophied part of its members. And then, what went through the head of the hooker Julian Montoya, if not the noble desire to pay homage to this demon of Tomas Lavanini, when the Argentine captain twisted as he did in the first regroupment of the match the body of Jean -Baptiste Gros, who had to immediately abandon this lawn having succeeded rather well since the start of the tour? How can we legitimize, also, the blunder that occurred a handful of time later, that is to say at the moment when Juan Martin Gonzalez deliberately threw the ball out of bounds, effectively condemning the Pumas to play ten additional minutes with a numerical inferiority? Not that the Argentinians, at the end of their strength at Saint-Denis, would have been capable of overthrowing the XV of France on equal terms, as their attacks bounced excessively on a tricolor wall that was less naive than it had been. a week earlier, against the All Blacks. But without so much angelism and naivety, this latest clash between Latins would not have been resolved in one half, as it was earlier.
Art of the counter and pragmatism: so what?
If we are a little angry with the South Americans for unwittingly depriving this international match of the narrative chaos that usually characterizes this type of meeting, we nevertheless recognize in Felipe Contepomi, the coach opposite, the sense of the synthesis. And since at the time of concluding the year of a French XV defeated twice in the eleven matches it had to play in 2024, we all wondered if the game of the Blues had, in one way or another, evolved according to the change of rules recently initiated by World Rugby, the divine bald had this cryptic response: “Since July, we have faced the French three times. Leur overall strategy is the same: three matches, three times the same thing. On the other hand, itWhat changed was that Dupont, Fickou, Ramos and the others were not there, last summer… » Contrary to what the other teams on the international circuit are tending towards, the French selection has for its part chosen to die for the ideas, which suddenly became subversive, having marked the first mandate of Fabien Galthié. When the opponent fights for possession, the French coldness in the scoring areas reminiscent of what Didier Deschamps did, at the time of his omnipotence at the head of the eleven tricolors. However, if the ” path “ that Fabien Galthié constantly evokes must sometimes be hard on passers-by like the steps of the Sacré-Cœur, we are nevertheless ready to follow him. On the condition that it leads, obviously, to something other than a simple autumn glow…
