The recriminations begin for France
© Getty Images
|
Robert Kitson ponders France's capitulation against Australia and wonders if it is symbolic of a greater problem, in The Guardian.
"It happened so quickly the victims seemed to struggle to take it in. France have been beaten heavily at home before, most notably by the All Blacks. But what happened to Les Bleus in the final quarter against Australia in Paris last Saturday was comfortably the most embarrassing episode of the European autumn, if not the entire year. You don't often see an international team simply give up.
"Having just got home from Twickenham, I'd missed the first 55 minutes of the game. Australia were 27–16 up, a decent cushion but nothing extravagant. The remainder of the game was oval-ball film noir, certainly from the point of view of the home defence coach Dave Ellis. Slick as the Wallabies backs were, the French corpse was barely twitching. They seemed uninterested in tackling, competing for the ball or, frankly, anything at all. A 16-13 lead dissolved into a 59-16 thrashing. To score 46 second-half points without reply, as Australia did, simply should not happen in a game involving two Tier One unions.
"By all accounts Marc Lièvremont is still trying to work out what went wrong. When coaches say that sort of thing they know the answer is usually staring them in the face. The squad are either so poor they can perform no better – clearly not the case here – or they have ceased to care about the job they are supposed to be doing. The Wallabies, I repeat, were as ruthless as starving freshwater crocs. But France? They were pitiful."
RSS feed
