Guillotine time for Brunel as French reach crisis point
Danny’s French exit
DANNY CIPRIANI is set to quit English rugby and head overseas at the end of the season after being overlooked by Eddie Jones.
The 31-year-old described the chance to play in France’s Top 14 as “an unbelievable opportunity” last week and is now understood to have informed Gloucester he wants to move on after just one campaign.
Cipriani started the third Test for England against South Africa last summer but has not featured since. With Owen Farrell nailed down as the World Cup stand-off and George Ford his deputy, he is poised to cut his losses.
Cipriani was included in a wider England group who gathered on New Year’s Eve for medical testing but, after being snubbed for the autumn Tests, he was again left out of England’s Six Nations squad.
Ireland flanker Sean O’Brien, meanwhile, has confirmed he is joining London Irish from Leinster.
O’Brien, 31, who has won 54 caps and was part of the side who defeated Scotland on Saturday, will team up with the Championship leaders after the World Cup.
“I’m keen to roll up my sleeves and use my experience to help re-establish London Irish as a top club in England,” said O’Brien.
Scotland have suffered a blow with back-row Ryan Wilson ruled out of the rest of the Six Nations after sustaining a knee injury.
NEIL SQUIRES WHAT price a French wooden spoon? It has happened only once in the Six Nations era, but such was the scale of the problems ruthlessly and repeatedly revealed by England on Sunday, it could occur again.
England were good at Twickenham – very good – but France were so cataclysmically bad that it looked like a Jacques Tati comedy.
“We got spanked,” said flanker Arthur Iturria. “Scotland will come to beat us in the next round like everybody does now.”
The Scots have not beaten France in Paris for 20 years but they have looked a superior side in the first two rounds. They will travel with optimism in a fortnight.
The French, in their current guise, cannot possibly win in Ireland, leaving a possible wooden spoon shoot-out with Italy in Rome on the final weekend.
Perhaps this should come as no surprise. In terms of resources, no nation under-performs like France.
They have finished in the bottom half of the championship in seven of the last eight seasons. But this collective is threatening to take sub-standard to a new level.
In their last three Tests, they have lost at home to Fiji, blown a 16-point half-time lead against Wales and suffered their heaviest defeat to England for 108 years.
Midi Olympique, the French rugby newspaper, had one word for the scale of the Twickenham rout – ‘Waterloo’. Crisis point has officially been reached after the 44-8 defeat.
It has become so bad people are even beginning to feel sorry for the French. At one point on Sunday referee Nigel Owens was moved to say “unlucky” to Antoine Dupont when a pass went forward, as he might have done to a player in a mini-rugby team getting thrashed.
For a nation that gave the rugby world Jean-Pierre Rives, Philippe Sella and Serge Blanco, this is a shambles wrapped in a fiasco.
As always there are talented young players across the Channel – France are the world champions at Under-20 level – but something is going horribly wrong in transition.
Chris Ashton, who played in France last season, blames the plodding pace of the Top 14 for the senior side’s problems, saying it does not prepare players for Test rugby.
Eddie Jones, if truth be told, does not rate the Premiership either but if nothing else it does provide him with physically conditioned players.
But it is much more than fitness issues and retro rugby at domestic level that is hurting the French, who have slipped to No10 in the rankings.
They look a rabble under the leadership of Jacques Brunel, left. It is as if they are not coached at all. “It was a mess, no one knew where they were meant to be on the field,” one anonymous player told Midi Olympique. “We were lost out there.”
There is off-the-cuff rugby and there is off-with-hishead rugby. After Sunday it is guillotine time for Brunel, left, who has won just three of his 11 Tests. His predecessor Guy Noves managed seven in 21.
Imagine if Sir Clive Woodward had been coaching France for the past four years instead. He applied for the job but, judged out of touch having last coached at top level in 2005, missed out to Noves.
For a top coach, France would represent an enticing project. Imagine if Jones got hold of them? Or Warren Gatland? There is so much potential to tap.
Gatland will be available after the World Cup – as, in all probability, will Jones. The man France really need though is Joe Schmidt who, from his time at Clermont, speaks the language and knows the culture.
Schmidt is stepping down after the World Cup and supposed to be taking some time away from rugby. But if French Federation president Bernard Laporte has any sense he will be on the phone to the Ireland coach today.