XV of France – “The meaning of celebration”: the general comment before France – Japan, first test match of the November tour of the Blues

Belts and suspenders, name a cane! In Marcoussis, we recently launched a fatwa against the third half and its outdated pleasures: sus à la bamboche, chase for drunks and, for the post-match, the elegant ladies of rue des Canettes are also asked to stay at home and as far away as possible from the Hôtel des Bleus. Obviously, the murderous summer and the Mendoza affair did their work in our territory and reshuffled the cards in the national team where, suddenly, the third half became undesirable because by its nature incompatible with the sport of high level. “In our time, said Patrice Lagisquet on Europe 1, we were celebrating more than necessary. But our matches had an effective playing time of twenty minutes! This is no longer the case today.” It's true, “Lagisque” and on average, an international test today flirts with forty minutes of “ball in play”, to borrow from the lexicon of a coach who recently pushed the vice as far as to draw up data on the bottle: “In a rugby team, he said in The Team, I think that 33% of players do not drink alcohol, 33% drink but control very well and finally 33% have weaknesses compared to their childhood.”

So, what's the point of paying nutritionists and chewing seeds if it means sticking two liters of cervoise down your throat or emptying a bottle of whiskey down your pipes when the hour of the brave strikes? Seen like that, the antinomy even seems crassly absurd and yet, the All Blacks of 2011 and 2015 will probably tell you that they had never had as many bottle-feeders as at the time when, weighted down by a few princes partying like Zac Guildford, Cory Jane and Piri Weepu, they had just won two world champion titles while regularly getting into trouble in Takapuna, the very chic suburb of Auckland. On this subject, we will also add that, apart from the yes-men welcoming every boast of Rassie Erasmus as gospel, there are some of us who doubt that these Springboks having trampled the World Cup then always accompanied their braai weekly (traditional South African barbecue) of chamomile infusion, as they claim today.

But then, where is the happy medium? And will the “little ones” ruin their adductors less, now that they no longer party, no longer puff on cigarettes or that their world, ultimately, is limited to the walls of a village in Essonne? deprived of an IV license? For the moment, we know nothing. But at the dawn of this tour supposed to restore the image of rugby in general and the French XV in particular, we are quite intrigued by the way in which modernity wants to chaperone adults who, on a field , are by nature expected to make a good decision every twenty seconds…

Japan as an expiatory victim…

As the first opponent of November approaches, the tone has in any case hardened within a French XV finding, after a year of withdrawal, its standard bearer Antoine Dupont. Life without “Toto”, without being unbearable, was not delirious either for the Galthié gang, once again determined to instill, among the big names on the international circuit, the fear that it had managed to spread around it until 'at the World Cup. To do this, it relies on four years of experience and a game plan that has proven itself since 2020. It also has in its bag some attractive newcomers and these improvisations inherent to a combat sport by nature. traumatic: a right pillar having a priori nothing to do with the number 8 opposite, a third line where “Roumat aux mains d'argent” finally resurrects the ghosts of Olivier Magne and Laurent Cabannes, an opener who prefers play back or a midfielder as explosive as orphaned by a quasi-centurion named Fickou.

But is all this really capital, my lords? And should we make much of the shape of some, the beginnings of others and ultimately, the various connections between all these guys? It's because in vain we lend a sympathetic ear to the delights of every chapel who cyclically announce to us a superpower in Asia, a sun rising in the Caucasus and a future world champion in North America, the brutality of international rugby brings us inexorably back to a reality where Japan, which has just conceded sixty points against the New Zealand reservists, presents itself in Saint-Denis as an expiatory victim.

In any case and despite all the friendship we have for this idiot Eddie Jones, this inaugural match has the false air of an ordinary prologue, the true appearance of a warm-up round, the value of 'a simple aperitif… if Florian Grill and Fabien Galthié are willing to grant us this final image. “The JapaneseGaël Fickou told us recently, we played them two years ago in Toulouse (35-17). We beat them but it wasn't an easy match: this team has energy and talent. [….] The first match of a tour is also by nature delicate: we lack reference points, the sensations are not perfect…” It's obvious, Gaël. However, all that this country has of rugby fans expects this French team to mark its territory, sweep away the Japanese outsider with the back of its sleeve and make people forget the feeling of unease born from a summer having danger of the values ​​that we had until now been full of, or even the sudden rejection felt by some towards a team whose legend, laughter or tears, we have until now enjoyed recounting.

So we want to enjoy it, boys. We want to erase from our memories that in the middle of Euro football, in the middle of the Tour de France and two weeks before the Olympics, the XV of France should never have made the news as it did on a daily basis, in last July. We want to rediscover the din of the Marseillaise, the madness of a stadium never as beautiful as when the Galthié band performs there, the diagonals of this great horse of Damian Penaud and the arabesques of Peato Mauvaka. We want to reconnect, in fact, with everything we love and that we have unintentionally lost sight of over the last six months…