Writing in the Irish Independent, Peter Bills analyses France's humiliating capitulation at the hands of Australia last weekend.
"No one does a crisis quite like the French. Whether it's students tearing up paving stones in the street to hurl at police, workers setting cars alight or politicians spouting verbal abuse at critics, the French are in a class of their own.
"Last week, President Nicolas Sarkozy charmingly called his media critics 'paedophiles'. So perhaps we should have expected similarly dramatic statements in the light of the French rugby team's abject 59-16 capitulation to Australia at the weekend, at the Stade de France.
"Ahead 16-13 seven minutes after half-time, France were smashed and humiliated as the Wallabies ran in six tries in the last 32 minutes, four of them in the final quarter of an hour, as France fell apart."
RSS feed
