LONG READ Can Les Bleus avoid a Black-wash in New Zealand?

Wind the clock back 11 years, to the England tour of the Shaky Isles in June 2014. The most important tour of the Stuart Lancaster era occurred only one year before a home World Cup, but its value to the team’s development was blown to smithereens by a clash with the club season.

The English Premiership final between Northampton and Saracens was played out at Twickenham on 31 May, while the first Test at Eden Park was scheduled for 7 June on the following weekend. That first game now had to to played by an England ‘B’ or ‘C’ team versus one of the greatest sides in All Black history.

The list of hall of famers included cap centurions Tony Woodcock and Owen Franks at prop, with probably the best second row of the professional era [Brodie Retallick and Sam Whitelock] locking the scrum behind them. Jerome Kaino and all-world skipper Richie McCaw in the back row; Aaron ‘Nugget’ Smith at nine, Ma’a Nonu and Conrad Smith in the centres, with Ben Smith conducting the orchestra from the back three.

After three or four months of intense preparation as Stuart Lancaster’s chief analyst, I felt I knew some of them as well as I knew my own family. Individual tendencies, psychological profiles, tactical patterns in all areas of the field, on both sides of the ball. The challenge was hugely stimulating because those All Blacks were so far ahead of everyone else at the time, and innovated in so many different aspects of the game.

England lost the first Test at the ‘Garden of Eden’ by only five points, 20-15, and it was mighty close. We could have won it, maybe we should have won it. A 15-15 deadlock was only broken when Conrad ‘the Snake’ struck lethally two minutes from the final whistle.

Sixteen new players, culled mostly from the clubs who had played in the Premiership final, arrived in time to play in the second Test in Dunedin. The winners [Northampton] were on a high and still celebrating their success; the losers [Saracens] were still working their way out of the trough of despond. Both needed some R & R and neither were fully prepared for the challenge of the All Blacks in New Zealand.

England lost the second Test by a solitary point, 28-27, but were blown away in Hamilton in the third 36-13. The players were thoroughly exhausted and depleted by the overlapping demands of club and country. A tour opportunity which could have proved the making of the squad and a springboard into the 2015 World Cup had been squandered. Instead of being remembered or even revered, the England vintage of 2014 is forgotten. The back story of how well they competed, and how close they got to tasting success doesn’t matter. Only that unforgiving ‘3-0’ appears in the black and white at the bottom of the page.

Sounds familiar? It should, because that is the dilemma facing Les Bleus in New Zealand now. Like England in 2014, Fabien Galthié’s charges produced a performance in the first Test at the Forsyth-Barr Stadium which was in equal parts courageous, determined and skilled in specific areas of the game. But now they face an uphill battle, and the prospect of another two matches against an All Blacks outfit which can only improve. It will improve in terms of personnel and selection, and it will certainly adopt a more refined tactical approach after seeing first hand, what France ‘B’ has to offer.

Reinforcements are due to arrive from home, just as they did for England in 2014. Five players [UBB men, centre Nicolas Depoortere and back-rowers Pierre Bochaton and Romain Vergnes-Taillefer, plus Toulousain centre Pierre-Louis Barassi and original selection Leo Barre] will bolster the tour party, but it is questionable whether any will add definite value to the starting XV which performed so well in Dunedin.

The underswell to that 2014 tour was the most seismic shift in European club history. Only three months later, the English and French clubs, represented by Premiership Rugby and the LNR respectively, would announce their intention to leave the Heineken Cup and create their own competition. It was a major apogée of the private club ownership model in England and France.

England and France stayed eventually, but not before a raft of radical new proposals had been accepted, and the competition had been restructured on their own terms. The changes included a reduction from 24 to 20 clubs in the European Champions Cup, with the marketing and governance of the tournament now the responsibility of a new independent body, EPCR.

Participation from Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Italy dropped from 11 to seven in the first year of the new tournament, and it has been the Anglo-French show ever since, with clubs from either England or France winning the Champions Cup on ten of the 11 occasions post-watershed. Only Leinster has been able to hold back the tide over the past decade.

The real question is whether the national team can flourish under such relentless pressure from the success of the domestic game. France supremo Fabien Galthié has been putting a brave face on it, at least so far. Let’s briefly reprise his pre-tour selection explanation:

“In collaboration with the clubs and the LNR, we have, with the indispensable presence of Jean-Marc Lhermet [F.F.R vice-president], changed the league-FFR agreement to allow Top 14 finalists to play in the second and third Tests. They will join us in Auckland on 2 July but will not play the first Test because they will have arrived [only] three days before.

“It’s not for a lack of explanation why we can’t send the most used players on a summer tour. French rugby players potentially have 37 matches to play with their club, to which we add, in absolute terms, 11 matches for the French XV. Who can play 50 rugby matches per season? Nobody.

“After 25 matches or 2,000 minutes played, the factors limiting a player’s performance and development are multiplied. This is a public health issue.”

The red lines are drawn at 2,000 minutes and/or participation in 25 games. It is easy to understand the source of Galthié’s dilemma when you compare the minutes/games of France’s ‘A’ team which finished the Six Nations versus Scotland, with the ‘B’ team which pitched up at Dunedin.

Salient points in the comparison are:

• Twenty-one of the players in the squad which played Scotland, and 17 of those who represented France in the first Test at Dunedin, have already crossed either one of Galthié’s red lines for player welfare.
• Five of the players who started for Les Bleus in Paris have crossed both red lines [Lucu, Bielle-Biarrey, Moefana, Penaud and Ramos] and were sensibly withdrawn from tour consideration. Four of those are UBB backs.
• A total of nine players from the Paris squad, and 12 from Dunedin, are likely to have exceeded 30 games for the season by the end of the tour.
• There are four players common to both squads [Guillard, Auradou, Le Garrec and Fickou]. Two of those [Le Garrec and Fickou] will likely cross both red lines in the course of this series, while four others [Attissogbe, Woki, Tixeront and Hastoy] will be either right on, or have crossed both limits.

The men at the beating heart of France’s first Test effort at Dunedin – number eight Guillard, the four half-backs [Le Garrec or Jauneau at nine, Segonds or Hastoy at 10], Fickou at 12 and Attissogbe at full-back] are all in imminent danger of playing over 2000 minutes, or over 30 games, or both. Overall, it is very hard to see what France is gaining in the player welfare equation. It is simply replacing one set of overworked players with another.

One of the key datasets I investigated for England 2014 was the French visit to New Zealand one year earlier. France hunted and harried the All Blacks to distraction in the course of a narrow 23-13 loss in the first Test. New Zealand rebounded to win the second Test 30-0 and the third 24-9, conceding no tries in 160 minutes of footy to Les Bleus in the process. Like England, France bowed out ignominiously at the 2015 World Cup two year later, courtesy of a 62-13 thumping by the All Blacks at the quarter-final stage in Cardiff. New Zealand did for the red cockerel as they did for the red rose.

The All Blacks scored three tries in Dunedin and they could have had six on another day, with three more disallowed on review. But despite forcing France to make 220 tackles and kick the ball away on 33 occasions for almost 1000 total metres, New Zealand were unable to conclusively prove the superiority of their attack to the French pattern of defence coached by the estimable Shaun Edwards.

The French defence out wide will typically feature the last edge defender standing square and looking in directly at the passer. He will cut the last attacker loose but the threat of an interception is magnified, and Damian McKenzie fails to solve the same problem on two successive occasions.

With the full width of the field to work in, the choke point will occur far further infield.

The man standing square and looking in at the start of the very first clip is number 11 Gabin Villière [in the red hat] and he tends to follow the ball in contact after his first mission is over. The Toulon man is really a number seven in a wing’s body, and he epitomised France robustness at the post-tackle throughout the match.

After losing the ball in midfield, most wings would be sprinting back post-haste to the safe haven of the side-line, but not Villière. He is quite content to track the ball as it bounces back in off touch, and finishes with a turnover from the classic position of a natural open-side – directly opposite the expected first receiver!

On this occasion, the All Blacks manage to bypass the square-in defender and Villière is playing ‘left safety’ in the French backfield, first bringing Ardie Savea to ground and then following the ball infield to lead a winning counter-ruck on the next play. Just after half-time, the rouge-et-noir wingman made a try-saving third intervention.

The French defence was stretched to breaking point and beyond at the Forsyth Barr Stadium, just as the Top 14’s deep resources of manpower are being tested to the limit by an understrength squad on tour to the Land of the Long White Cloud.

There is the same sense of clash between the needs of club and country, between domestic and international seasons that England experienced on the other side of the world 11 years ago. The similarities are too close to ignore. The fragmented nature of preparation on that 2014 tour destroyed any gains in development that might have been made, individual or collective. France’s inconsistent selection and player welfare policy now threatens the same fate. Three games to nil, and a blackwash.